Seeking Advice From This Wonderful Community

Hello and thank you for taking the time to read my post.

I played Everquest many years ago before deciding to pursue real life obligations. Recently I have settled down some and got to missing the old play style. I've played quite a few newer MMOs and none seem to have the same laid back gaming style.

With the launch of this new expansion I decided that now would be a great time to jump back in and see what I could accomplish. The advice I seek is about leveling up my character because at current she seems to be under performing greatly.

About my character-

I bought this newest expansion and subscribed for a premium account. I play a level 105 magician with only auto granted AA. I have roughly 8300 AA and I believe I have all my spells rank 1. My gear is tier 1 group gear with stats around 2000/2000 hp/mana each. I don't have any augments for my gear at current. I have the J5 merc from the mission.

I am a solo player right now as I need to take frequent breaks without notice. It would not be fair of me to join other players with my sporadic play style.

My question-

As a 105 mage with my gear, AA and spells, where and how should I be gaining AA? I feel like lack of AA, more than anything, is what is holding my character back. Is it even possible for a solo player to gain AA with a merc only? Please remember I am a returning player from many years ago and I am not all that familiar with new zones and quest within them. As much detail as you could give would be greatly appreciated.

If you are 105, then you must have bought the character, or have a level 85 Heroic levelled for you. If you have the Heroic, there is a full set of reasonable augs you can get by doing the quests in Feerrott the Dream and House of Thule; these can easily be soloed at 105. Check what pet focus you have, in case it needs to be upgraded.

Use the /achievements window to review what quests you can do.

Adding AAs can be done via daily quests from Franklin Teek, or via HAs (started in the CotF expansion). Dailies are easy, HAs are best done with a partner (but some can be soloed).

Hello Borek-VS,

Thank you for taking the time to respond! I am level 105 due to my friend leveling me to this level. My friend has since quit due to issues with the direction of the game. I was with him for the armor drops aka getting the tier 1 group gear, but I was not present for the leveling from 1-105. I believe I am a heroic character because I was able to do the J5 merc quest in the dream.

My focus is minion XVI

Franklin Teek only gives quest up to level 90, are these still good for AA at 105? I tried doing an HA last night and I was unable to complete it. The mobs were just hitting too hard for my earth pet and J5 healer. The mission was called "Assault the main hive". I'm unsure if this is a hard mission or not, so I will attempt a different one tomorrow.

Welcome back.

The mission you attempted is rather difficult. I'd recommend trying one of the other missions. While Dead Hills missions are rather boring they're also fairly straight forward and not as difficult. I'd recommend "Into the hills" or "Scouting Ahead". You'll get a few double pulls from those but as long as you have fortify companion, frenzied burnout and other pet buffs up you should be fine.
http://cotf.eqresource.com/scoutingahead.php
http://cotf.eqresource.com/intothehills.php

Have you experimented with different AA's to get a feel for what they do and when to use them? If not go to a lower level zone (Argath, Valley, etc.) and use them until you are proficient.

The Franklin Teek quests are ok at 105 but if you can get a group and run through some HA's the xp will go a lot faster.

Something regarding your merc. Do you have it set on efficient, balanced or reactive?
http://eqmagicians.com/faq/what-are-these-stances

One more thing about soloing stuff. Remember that your gargoyle pet is an effective off-tank. While they die quickly you can also chain them on a second/third mob. While your earth pet should be able to handle two mobs at a time with your merc on reactive unless you've taken extra measures they tend to get squishy with three or more mobs.

Franklin Teek quests are really really easy at 105, and the 85/90/90 alternate will net you 15AA (total) for about 15 minutes of easy killing. You can do better at HAs, but these can be a good start to get your bearings on.

Expect to spend more time running to zones than actually killing unless you have a druid/wizard buddy.

Thank you Tweelis! It's good to know that it was in fact a difficult mission. It was the first and only I've attempted so far so I will try the ones you mentioned next. The only reason I picked the one that I did was because Guard Hamarn gave it to me as a daily.

I feel like I have a good understanding of the AA that I do have as well as my spells. My basic setup is to buff myself and pet with burnout, surge, frenzied burnout, virulent, group ds, self mana regen ect. I open up with pet attack frenzied burnout, virulent, refresh surge as needed (I use two different levels of it), use AA nuke on cooldown, use swarm pet on cooldown.

I'm going to try the Franklin Teek missions tonight or tomorrow. Roughly 15 AA per day? Not terrible for minimal work.

My merc is always on reactive. Mana is never an issue, it's lack of dps and pet surviving that makes me fail. That and the mobs in the last mission could two round me =/. I have roughly 70,000 hps fully buffed and some of the things in there were hitting for 15,000 a swing. I was dead before the merc on reactive even began casting a heal.

Thank you Stagen! I'm going to try them tomorrow and see how it goes. I need quite a bit of AA by the looks of it so it might take me a while, but as long as I'm making progress I'm happy. I just need to learn where the zones are

What are the easiest HA's to do solo? They have a 15 min lockout timer from what I read. Is it viable to repeat easy HA missions for AA exp?

The easiest ones are the 2 Tweelis mentioned. These are usually referred to as "Gribbles" (because the quest giver is a gnome named Gribble) or "DH HAs" (because they're in Dead Hills. There are other HAs in Dead Hills, but those are the most popular.). If you ever get some time to dedicate to grouping, lots of groups happen here and the missions go quickly in a group.

You used to be able to chain them, but in The Great Nerf of Anything with a Pulse that happened with TDS launch, they got long lockout timers. When the dust settled after the huge breuhaha on the forums, they were left with 3 hour lockouts. Also note that you need to complete the HA to get your xp; the actual mob kills give very little xp.

Thank you Beryon! If I do the two mentioned, the lockout timer begins when I start correct? So if those two missions take me 3 hours, I'm good to go again?

I found out with the hive mission that I got nothing even though I spent roughly 2 hours trying to beat it... Felt a little frustrated, but I'm glad you guys are here with such good information!

The dps you're lacking is from your own spells. The pets should be less than half of your total damage. Substantially less once you've developed the character more.

Pull with the Remorseless Servant, then /pet attack
Immediately Rain of Cutlasses, then Coronal Rain
Spear of Molten Shieldstone

When those spells have finished casting, Servant will be ready again to start the chain again, if the mob has survived that long. When you're casting them, be aware of Servant taking 20 sec to deal all its damage, and each rain taking 7 sec, so if the mob will die sooner than that you should use a regular nuke instead.

Thank you Brohg! I actually do not use any rain spells so this is a big change for me. Typically I am fighting two-three mobs at a time in lesser zones and I'm as tanky as a wet tissue. Right now my pets are my primary damage source. The swarm pets plus regular water pet/earth for harder mobs, plus DS. With recasting the DS and the swarm I typically will run low on mana every few pulls.

Water pet is a rogue, so should only be used if someone/thing else is tanking. You use your Companion's Relocation AA to push your water pet behind the mob while its fighting. When your pet is going to be or may be tanking, use Air or Earth. Earth has higher hp and much better agro, air pet has the bonus of stunning stunnable mobs, which is much better than disruptive root procs in groups.

Both your summoned pet and the Servant can tank mobs for you. If you're pulling a pair, cast Servant on one of them then send your pet on the other. Your pet will hold the second mob right there with the Servant while you use the chain I described (Servant-Rain-Rain-Spear) on the first. Unless you allow a gap with no Servant on it (which won't even close to happen if you're keeping up the sequence against group mobs), neither mob will come for you as you Rain them both to death. Rains are super against 2-pulls, they get a bonus fourth hit that they don't get against a single mob.

Your mana will be better if you kill mobs faster, but also make use of all the tools available. There's a bunch of pieces to put together for magicians, all of them should be used "aggressively", that is to say early and often, not just when you bottom out:

Elemental Form:Water AA and
Praetorian Guardian buff and
Dark Symbiosis buff stay up all the time.

Thaumatize Pet and
Gather Magnitude you cast frequently. They should be on your spell bar ~permanently and greyed out from use ~constantly.

You can use both the Large Modulation Shard summoned by the group AA and Wand of Dark Modulation summoned by self-only spell at the same time, they don't share a cooldown timer. Both should be used every five minutes religiously.

If you're keeping all the regens on, and casting/clicking all your recoveries, then you should still be going down mana as you throw out lots of damage. As soon as you hit the threshhold, boop your Mana Reserve AA for a shot in the arm to carry you through to the next Gather.

Well I'm completely broken at this point. I tried what you guys refer to as the easiest HA with into the hills, I got totally ran over =/ It was worse than the previous mission. I tried it 5 times using different strats posted here and each time it was the same slaughter. I'm not sure if this thread is relevant https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/cotf-has-obsolete-now.228306/ but I sort of hope it is, other wise I'm really bad at this game

HAs aren't designed to be soloed so I don't know why the above posters suggested you do that. Maybe they're top end raid geared, idk.

Before this week, HAs were soloble by some classes. However, the innocuous line in the patch notes:

- Heroic Adventure level-scaling NPCs have been re-tuned to better scale against player power.

Seems to actually mean that HAs are now MUCH tougher to complete. And yet DBG haven't added higher level daily quests. For shame!

Thank you everyone for all the replies. HA are no longer an options for me as I've lost more exp than gained from attempting them. Can anyone suggest a method to farm AA for a solo 105 mage? Are there methods? Right now I'm just doing the daily teek missions 85-90-90 and logging off for the day... Kind of sad about this.

pick a zone like shards landing, pop your merc and do the hunter achievement. merc and partisan ones too

-Sobmre

I would add 2 or 3 more chars, like a sk and a enchanter for crowd control, then use kiss or some other means to control them while you drive with the mage or sk, they should all have their merces up, like 2 damage casters and a cleric.

My setup is sk,mage,enc and cleric, and 2 wiz merc though, u might have to have a real cleric to do tier3 stuff... but I don't know, the mage pet might be a good enough tank...

its a good setup that will allow you to do the tds progression, get to thulia island, and from there on your little group will gain AA out of the nose, cause u can do the heroics there over and over, and they net a lot

Doing frankin teak is boring compared to playing the game the way it was meant to be played: boxing a full group

What are the achievements? They give experience? rewards? I've never heard of those.

Is that a typo? "then use kiss or some other means" what are you referring to? I actually hate multi boxing. I'd really prefer just playing my mage with her merc.