Can someone give me some advice on this? My wife and nephew and I all made HC's and have been having a ball figuring them out and doing the J5 Merc quest in The Feerott Dream. Finished that, and went to Teek and got the Hot Zone daily quest to go to the Old Bloodfields. There we have been slaughtering yellows and whites for a couple of hours, and now we are kindof wondering what else we could go and do. Is there a place we can camp for fun drops at this level? Or a place with extremely great exp gain (so far the exp gain has been quite slow - I know, this is EQ - but really, very slow lol)? Or a place to farm something that we need? Quests that we should really be working on? So yeah, we could just use a little bit of guidance at this point. We are learning the classes well, and succeeding in our challenges. But once that's over with (hmm, can we kill these guys?), it's time to move on and find a new challenge. Just not sure what/where we should go/do. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Your next hot zones will be the grounds and the valley. With three people and three mercs you could venture into the HoT and see how well you do. I believe there are quest givers there too. Oh, and HAs.
Thank you. I had to look up HA, and I assume they are Heroic Adventures. That sounds like fun. At the moment, we are only using one merc. I'm boxing an SK and enchanter, my wife is playing a cleric, and my nephew is playing a monk and wizard. We might have to alter our setup a little but, so far so good. It leads me to my next question though. When doing the J5 merc quest, we had to each do each and every step one at a time. To the point, that at the end, we had 4 Dracolichs up all at once. In reality there should have only been 1 Dracolich up, and all of us get credit for the kill. How can you share quests and quest progress in EQ? I remember the first day of the whole Heroic Character thing, some nice person invited me to their group so they could go out and start doing the J5 merc quest for me and a few others (solo), while I was still fumbling around in PoK. Checking the journal showed me that I was still getting credit for the kills and progression, and I wasn't even in the same zone! lol So yeah, how does that work? Because when boxing, we really need this to happen, and if we are to do these HA's, it sounds like we need to learn it asap.
Well, we ended up going back to the Feerott and doing the couple of quests there. That took all of the evening, and while we had fun and got a bit of experience, the rewards were crap. Augmentations that give 80 mana when you already have 35000 and rarely ever get below 75% seem to be pointless, even when you are stacking them in every slot. The exp rewards were literally 1% per quest. Very disappointing. Tomorrow I guess we are going to try HoT and see how we do. I suppose the main question we want to know is, at which point can we begin swapping out this defiant gear for actual looted gear? I believe that would be the most "driving" incentive at this point. I hope someone will take the time to help a little and answer these questions.
If y'all are rarely ever going below 75% mana, you haven't figured out your abilities well. definitely hit up your class forums & serverwide class channels to see how you can pump more juice into your killin' The armor you're started with isn't Defiant, it's the same quality that quest drops would make in the content you're tackling (Feerrott). Besides the missing augments intended to be carrots to get folks engaged, developers made Heroic Characters pretty solid. The caster versions of heroic augs are 200ish mana once you count in the Int/Wis, which isn't laser eye beams, but isn't quite as bad as you make out. You can pass them up & just go leveling instead, but you shouldn't expect augs elsewhere to be on a whole different scale or anything. A little better, which of course they should be if you have to work harder for them, but not any orders of magnitude. The *tank* versions of heroic augs (30AC each) are a pretty big deal, since AC isn't accumulated on the same scale as raw mana. If wife or nephew is warrior or paladin or SK, you should totally take the time to fill out their set of heroic augs. Which will incidentally fill out yours as well, as a side benefit You can loot upgrades to the gear you're wearing starting at level 87 in the The Grounds zone, it's the back lawn / garden of House of Thule. There are major upgrades available via the Bazaar at level 90 - attunable things from the Rain of Fear expansion.
What Brohg says about the augs; they are the easiest and quickest way to get a decent set for any class. Don't ignore the other options for priests and casters, with +healing or +spell damage instead of mana. The Heroic gear is a good step about the Elegant Defiant or even the slightly higher level quest gear from TBS achievements. However, it is also a step below the drops from the Grounds. Alternately, Reis or Rustic drops are tradeable, and so can be found in the Bazaar.
Thanks guys. You've changed my mind about the augments. So technically, what we need to be doing is working on all getting a set. I didn't realize the heroic gear wasn't equivalent to defiant. Still though, I want to get to the point of working on swapping it out for earned gear asap. As for the 75% mana comment, that's just me, the enchanter. I looked up some guides also, but I can't seem to burn my mana down no matter how hard I try. Here's my rotation.... Monk brings mob in, immediately I tash and slow (which always hits for a "partial" -- I don't understand that, I thought chanters were the other "slowers" besides shamans), then I throw on my 2 best dots, and start nuking, alternating between my 2 best nukes. The mob is dead before my mana is ever below 75%. Now when the monk brings in more than one, of course I get to actually be an "enchanter" and work on crowd control. Still though, this is simple, as I just forcus on AE mez if necessary and or single target mez. At this point, I'm not focusing on damaging the mobs being attacked so much as I am making sure the others aren't waking up. I'll still throw on the debuffs though for the mob being killed. My wife's cleric gets low on mana from time to time, as does the wizard. But as for me, I just can't figure out what else I can do to help kill the mob faster or burn down more mana. Mana comes back quite fast when you have the mana regen buffs the chanter provides.
We are on the Vox server. I've heard of you and your guild on Rathe. Kindof wish we had rolled on there to join you guys. But it might be a little too late. Nevertheless, we could still use some advice as to where we should go and what we should be doing as well as goals. Like a clear direction. For example: You need to go to X zone, and kill X mobs/do X quests until you hit level X, then move onto X......etc.
Partial slows happen to everyone on almost everything over level 70. It's just SOE trying to trick you. If you want to burn some mana and really up your group's kill rate, start charming. I should warn you that it's exciting, even when you get used to it .
Alright, Enc is fair. Enc does get better at burning mana once you have Mindblade (lv90) and Mindscythe (lv95) to add to the spellbar. The dots are probably a waste with a group's dps. Runing the SK after each pull dies could totally be worth your time/mana, especially as it would by proxy pad the cleric's mana bar. You can also use some more mana by being the puller instead of monk, to actively keep the next mob mezzed in camp. Mezzed, pointedly, with Chaotic Befuddling to twincast the nukes you have to deal more damage and burn more mana for damage. The Partial on slows is a property of the mob, nothing to do with your class or character. Some intentionally weak monsters you'll get a Mostly on, some intentionally brutal monsters (like frequently on raids) you'll get Slightly slowed. Shm/enc/bst/brd all get the message. Full slows are approximately unheard of since tier 2 of Planes of Power, 12 or whatever years ago.
Basic advice is: do the dailies, you should be able to handle 85 and alternate (Grounds), and 90 (Lunanyn) if you are careful. Skip the 80, too much travel time is required. You can't take the 90s until you are 86. So start with the Mercenary and Partisan achievement quests in the House of Thule, then do the same in Feerrott the Dream (which is a slightly harder). If you have any spare time, take a look at the Dead Hills Heroic Adventures. As you progress, keep doing the Mercenary and Partisan achievements in the newer expansions, at least for the entry zones.
Soloing or duoing, I had more trouble with Grounds than Lunanyn in the 80s. It is odd because the valley is much better xp and harder hitters, so it should be more challenging, but that wasn't the case for me. The valley are easy to single pull, while the Grounds can often find messy adds, thanks to their quick respawn timers. Although an enchanter can just laugh away adds easily enough.
Well, I believe we found our home for quite a while. House of Thule is awesome! Tons of named mobs, that drop pieces for upgrading our gear, as well as some slight upgrades on item drops sometimes. And some cool kill quests that yield augments too. Had a ball tonight! lol We first started in the yard where you zone in, and I believe we killed about 3 named mobs out there before moving inside, and eventually working our way downstairs to camp more named mobs. Bonecracker, Ganborn, and the Nightmare Golem. We killed them each about twice, and it was an awesome challenge with breaking spawns, and keeping them broken, as well as getting back down there after we had a bad pull. I'd say it was the perfect EQ experience tonight hehe. I freaking LOVE House of Thule now. Awesome set of zones, and sounds like an awesome expansion!
Speaking a little tangentially of goals: the shadowknight epic 2 and the cleric epic 2 are serious big deal tools for their respective classes. Whether you do them immediatamente or wait till you equip level 90 armor/spells is up to you, but they really ought to get done. Even to sideline "real" progress for to go mess about in level 70 content. They're Game Changers, as it were. Monk is also good, though not HAYmazing. Wiz/enc only worth doing if you like the look of their associated ornaments.
