Hi, everyone. I played on Phini through PoP and am now playing on FV. With all the "EQ stopped being EQ after PoP" hate, and my own lack of experience with content past PoP, I've been hesitant to play. However, I've had an absolute blast so far. My ranger is 57, and I decided to roll a box shm for him, who is currently 36 and rising fast. I popped a krono on both accounts, so they have J1 mercs atm. What I've done so far: cashed in loyalty for plat, bought an assortment of level appropriate defiant armor/bow/offhand, ancient prismatic weapon, and haste item. What I'd like help with: 1) I want to explore content released since PoP. There's guides for this sort of thing, but they really only talk about cash loot and exp. My shm did 30-36 in Stone Hive on a whim, and it's just a lovely zone! Which zones should I prioritize for sight-seeing while I level? 2) Which quest rewards and item drops should I work on, as I level? Should I just ignore this until I'm upgrading past the highest grade of defiant? Or are epic quests worth doing? I've never done past 1.0 before. 3) Just generally, what does gear set progression look like for the 65-105 grind? Do you skip a few tier sets? What sets should I look out for? Thanks for your help, GL and HF.
1) Gates: Riwwi and Tacvi (lvl 65ish) 2) Omens: Do the Mauramite Proving Grounds (lvl 65ish) 3) DoN: Haven't spent much time here so can't say 4) Darkhallow: Ruins of Illsalin was my favorite by far. Have sound + music turned up it's kinda creepy haha (lvl 70ish) 5) TSS: Valdeholm and Frostcrypt (70-75ish) 6) Secrets of Faydwer: Crystallos and Bloodmoon Keep (lvl 75-80ish) 7) HoT: Wasn't too HoT (pun intended) on any of these zones. Fear Itself if you like plane of fear I guess. (Lvl 85ish) 8) VoA: Sarith (pushing lvl 90) 9) CotF: I've been running Heroic Adventures and can't really speak much for zones after this point. 2) To each their own haha. For haste I like Cragbeast belt for melee overhangs. 1.5/2.0 for sure. 3) Defiant will hold you into 80. At 70-75 you can do SoD progression for paragon gear (Google that or ZAM). Then 85ish is Abstruse from HoT. After that is Rustic at 90. Or hold out for Fear touched at 92. Starting at 75 you can run Heroic Adventures through the CotF expansion for Marks of Valor. They have gear for levels 75, 80, 85, 90, 95 I know of. Or TBM missions for Crypt Hunter gear which you get Remnants of Tranquility to buy augs that you update every 5 levels, to deck out your gear
When you open maps there is a zone guide button. You can sort zones by level and expansion. Can also click atlas to see what connects to what. Also Allakhazam has lore writeups on a lot of expansions/zones. You definitely want to do Muramite Proving Grounds trials at some point. Just remember: those were the means of flagging for then endgame raid zone, and were targeted full groups of well geared and experienced lvl 70 players. I would hold off till 85 and J5 mercs before doing those. Main reason you want those done is each raises your resists over cap by 8, for a total of +48, and thats a huge bonus all the way through 105 and raiding. Underfoot was also a raiding expansion and mobs there tend to be quite formidable in general. Far as gear goes, defiant easily eclipses anything else up to around level 70-75, then you need to look for better things. And defiant is cheap as dirt. Sure some sell it... on typical materials farming outing involving lvl 75-ish mobs, I often leave 10-20 elegant defiant rotting. Around 75, I would try Oceangreen Hills hub fro SoD era. It offers a bunch of quite easy quests that result in Paragon gear thats easily comparable to heroic/T1 HoT. And you assemble a rather nice aug that will last you well into 100s. If into tradeskills, be sure to run the shawls, solstice/aid grimel/eron quest lines. Those culminate in rather insane augs. Other things to go for are useful clickies. Shrink, invis, DA/DB, cancel magic, memory wipe: alk of these will remain quite useful into endgame.
Be sure and get into a good guild of your liking. This will make your experience a lot better, and you will need groups/raids to get some of the augs/gear for your shawl 2.0 and epic 2.0-2.5. How useful are the epics? that is a question better answered by people that actually have them (I only have 1.0 cleric), but know that the 2.0 is supposed to be used well into the 89's/90+ Welcome back and have fun!
Thank you guys for your very informative posts. I'm sorry for not responding to show my appreciation earlier. My ranger and shaman are 76 and have just begun the Oceangreen Hills achievement quests. Even with everyone recommending the paragon gear, I was still floored to see how big of an upgrade these pieces are. The paragon recurve bow, for example, has a ratio that is more than double that of the steamwork compound bow I'm currently using. Each of my pieces of armor has between 100 and 300 hp on them, while each of the paragon pieces has over 800. The lowest AC pieces of paragons have more ac than the highest ac item I'm currently wearing. It was hard to put the stats on these items into perspective when I was at lvl 40, but at 75 the contrast between paragon and what it will replace is very clear. I did 1.5-prequest, 1.5, and 2.0 epic for ranger over the course of about a week with overwhelming and immediate help from the ranger chat channel for each of the fights that I couldn't 2-box.
Any advice for 84+? I've been doing some HS farming field of scale, as well as the 3 heroic adventures from gribble. It feels a bit slow... Tank and healer j1 mercs are woefully insufficient. On a 3 pull of evens, or even a 2 pull of yellows, I can expect the tank to die before I get everything slowed and/or rooted. Even though kill speed is completely compromised, I've been root/rotting with shm dots and rng archery because clearing pulls in melee with merc help results in too much downtime waiting on healer merc mana or waiting to revive tank merc.
This. At 85 you'll get nice upgrades via spells for the Shaman and some good AAs for the Ranger as well. And also at 85 you'll have access to the push over merc upgrade quest (from your J1 to J5 merc). And the boost from J1 to J5 mercs is kind of a game changer as well so just tough it out if you can.
