85 and still cant get a group

I'm seeing plenty of SS groups of heroic characters, you may just need to quickly solo to 90ish while this free heroic thing is big because 85 is a little too low.

Don't forget to grab ER quest and do Cella while peeps are running it frequently too.

I just created a level 85 heroic warden 3 days ago on the FP server this is what I did with her.

I did the speak as a dragon quest for her mythical(soloable), if you dont have to do this and have another character you can just transfer a token to your new character without doing the entire quest but I didnt have one on the FP server anymore mine are all on the AB server so I had to do it for the 15th time

I then went and did my epic repercussions for my mythical. I was able to solo most of it at level 85 except the named in RH because he was red, and the named in DB, and Queen in Cella. If there are no groups for ER then just get in the chat channel and do this ( need a healer, tank, dps for ER pm or whatever you need for help).

I then soloed Sundered and Stonebrunt quests, there is a box they give you in each zone that has a ton of repeatables so if you do the partial front quests in Sundered first(just the Paniel ones) then move to Stonebrunt and do all of those you will hit level 92 in couple of day. My warden is level 90 already and I didnt finish the quests yet.

At 90 I will now either start a SS group myself or see if they are forming for one in chat I just watch the chat channels to get some power leveling to 95.

At 85 you will not find any groups except for maybe the Epic Repercussions or if someone is bored they sometimes go back to the older zones you can just watch chat its kinda off and on.

To get AA if I dont cap doing all of this I just chronomage down and do the lower level dungeons and wipe the names out.

If you want to raid you have to have a guild you can hit U on the keyboard and search for guilds whether you want to raid or not they have a description of what they do try some and see how it goes.

Couldnt edit for some reason sigh. another note:

Another note:Once your level 92 you can do the Drinal questline which will yield you EM raid equivalent gear and you will then be able to also purchase yellow/red adorns from the merchant. People still do COE zones grouped so you can get the obols and greater spirits once you hit 95 if you havent already doing this entire questline will get you to 95 from 92. If you have a character that has already done this questline just transfer a token to this one for the gear and to be able to loot obols greater spirits already etc.

yeah right.... it's not going to be much better after level 92-95. you will have to get lucky and find a guild who is willing to help you out otherwise deal with the PUGs, how seldomly random they come around and the attitudes that come with them, kicking people from groups for whatever reason and the random people who need on something not for their character.

i really miss the old days of this game, where people didn't get upset and break up a group if it wiped 3 times. guilds where people don't only login on double xp weekends. and the selfish people who seem to litter the game now.

it would be nice to get the groups like in the old days. There were people all over the place LFG but the games been out a long time now and the numbers simply arent there anymore. like the others said its pretty much ALL guild grouping now. I have to agree 99.9% with your assessment of guilds too. (im sure there is one or two out there that are perfect).

An idea I had was to try and figure out a way to have some sort of "time zone" guilds. It makes it so much harder when your from Illinois like me and you have guildies all over the country and world who play at all times of the day and night.

I switched from Freeport to Antonia Bayle and I like it a lot better. ( but thats just my opinion )

I wish you luck my friend.

agreed

an idea is to actually fix the dungeon finder, and as mentioned just make it a global pool.

i doubt this will happen though because it would require a system to synchronize all of the servers.

On top of that the expansion is old (not for me since i returned like a month ago). And in such situation people already got all they wanted for instances, and they are also tired of the content.

So not many are grouping.

I quite disagree with the SS group idea, I went there to help some friends (2 lvl 91 and 1 92) leveling, we had quite some fun
but we were playing like fools since encounters there are totally trivial. So i would pull one pack, my guaridan friend one or 2 others, the scout another one ...

So it's not too good if you want to see real teamplay.

One thing I think your forgetting, yes there's tons of 85's right now. But they are new 85's. Either players trying out a new class, or new players trying out the game.

85 is a big level to jump to, there are so many things to figure out on the hot bars and what they mean. mew players are being launched into the middle of a game into a vast zone. Vets are playing catch up with epic quests , shinies and L& Ls or maybe even crafting up a crafter

so you see, getting a 85 group right now may actually be harder than normal. people are either getting the hang of things or working on things. Should pick up by the time they are 90 or 92

Peachie here folks. Hi Colby! I tend to agree with the Op on one point. I don't like to start groups because they DO
expect you the group leader to know the zones and know what you are doing. Alot of these zones I dont know well at all.

Raiding is not my thing.

Guilds. I don't advertise my guild. Only have 4 people. We are west coast time. We don't raid. But I do try and help those in need. I also have been trying to find lvl 85 ish groups to help lvl my 88 swashie.

For some reason grouping at any level in this game has gone out the door and its a real shame. What better way to meet people than to PUG...

Leaves you all fresh cupcakes.

I am glad you find SS trivial.

We didn't with a decent group. Deaths were there. The tank was doing the best he could with what he had. There were 2 95s in the group, me on my ranger and a warlock. Though for the time we did run around, we had fun regardless.

I am and always will be an advocate for the fact that for SOME of us........this game is NOT easy. I get very annoyed with those that tell others oh I am so bored this game is too easy. For you, perhaps. For me, its quite challenging.

From a returning player on Freeport server,

To be honest, this game is as polar opposite as magnet when it comes to having or not having a guild. As a small look back, I had played at launch and around 2 years ago, but I could never get enough friends or find a decent guild to play with. Like you when i came back in early September to play with a friend, I ended up overwhelmed at the current game / playerbase. The amount of people and mechanics were much different than when i had last played. I ended up poking around and was thinking about just not logging in until I was invited to a guild.

Abilities:


There are so many abilities for some classes that returning / playing a class can be a guessing game. Having someone to help you out and experimenting is key. Find your playstyle with your class and try to get the most out of their abilities. Having advice from guildies who have played the game for 8 years...helps a bit. Take some advice with a grain of salt but look at it with a fresh set of eyes. Enjoy the class.

Having a Guilld:
The guild was the difference that allowed easier travel ( wizard/druid/bell and specific location portals), advice on where to go(that you can't really get in general/lfg/auction), and most importantly they helped when available to while questing/dungeons. My play times aren't perfectly matched to be of great use and I upfront told them I wouldn't be available on a regular basis to "raid" if they were looking for a future raid spot. They understood and helped me get back into a game.

The ease of travel that a guild hall allows you is irreplaceable. Also if your on freeport, You can open eq2 menu, go to housing and the number one highest rated house you can visit is called "Guild Hall". As long as you are outside a non contested area(dungeon), you can visit this house with a door standing in front of you when you enter. The door is a portal to your guild hall.

Lack of information/ Accurate Information:
I can't stress how much of an information gap there is with this game. The information even on zam or the wikia seems to lack concise information for someone who is new or outdated with information from 2 years ago. If you are trying to find out about gear and wear to get it...sorry to say but without some guildies / players giving me pointers or crafting some gear, I would have been reading some info from 2010/11 that in all honesty was completely inferior.

On the gear side, the 85 free gear is leaps beyond gear at that current level and until 90 there is no point of upgrading. One of the less known things for returning is the huge stat gap from old to new 90 mastercrafted gear. Having a heroic char you will jump from 75 stat gear to around 130ish. This increase will drastically affect your play at 90.

Leveling:
This leads me into the Epic Repercussion series/ Speak like a dragon and quests in general. The game has a real depth and history that is hard to get back into. The epic repercussion quest will basically give you a buff from the Mythical version of the epic released around 3-5 years ago. This is invaluable in most cases and the series of quests you need to do to get this will take you from 85-86.25 or there around. This is time consuming but having a guild to ask about certain aspects or even have someone show you around is fantastic. User knowledge is often the best for tips / tricks about doing something.

Leveling at 86-90 is really up to you. There are chronomages that will "mentor" your level down but you keep your damage from your real level. Things will con and give xp like they would at the mentored level (reduced by a % because of the mentoring). This allows you to go back to older zones chrono'ed down and effectively solo for good xp. At 85, I might suggest clefts of rujark chronoed down to 55.

If that isn't your cup of tea, then questing in the mentioned zones previously will get you some levels (stonebrunt highlands and such). This allows you to get to the magic level of 90 and enter SkyShrine. At 90 in Skyshrine and grouping, will be your best bet for leveling or was for me 3 weeks ago. I've gotten a couple of groups with my heroic char there also in the past several days.

At 95:
After leveling to 95, the world of norrath is your oyster. AA grinding in chrono down , Advanced solos for gear, raiding, Your options and what you feel are worth your time are up to you.

I do have a small warning about the playerbase. The playerbase is basically locked on what a class can do. Coming from playing mmos for the past 14 years this isn't unusual,but the way players see a class is extremely odd.

For instance, healers that have the ability at all to dps are expected to dps and heal. Not entirely unbalanced if they have the ability but it becomes a sticking point on a class that heals fine without dpsing. Wardens and inquisitors being in that class. While a fury on the other hand is viewed by many I've talked to as more dps than heals. On the other end of the stick, many dps I've seen under perform. These dps are often only 30% higher than a healer. For a class that has no other use besides dps this seems very peculiar. I have laid out what i've seen and parsed first hand. If this isn't the normal, I can only say I haven't seen much to contradict this. Also I'm not saying that great players in a great raiding guild don't blow this scenario out of the water, but on average the tank heals and dps in a group are not very off in dps.

With this being said, great players can do great things.

The few other comments in this thread are on point. The dungeon finder in it's current state is broken. Avoid the DF in it's current state....there is no point besides a waste of time.

Also Kalika's point is probably the most spot on for the reason you are not seeing much group content. This is at this point an old expansion and people are leveling alts and doing it as fast as they can through whatever means they can.

Since scads of people are popping up with level 85 characters, I've seen lots of group requests at that level.

Don't sit on your thumbs waiting to be asked to group, though. Just posting "85 Necro LFG" is pretty much useless. Instead, figure out where you'd like to go, and then post in chat that you need more for a group to {Your Destination Here}, i.e. "Charasis VOE looking for more, 85+, PST!" or "Hole group looking for more peeps, 85+, PST!" etc.

Once you have four players, take stock and make sure you have the people you need. Then start advertising for whoever it is you are missing: "Charasis VOE needs tank plus one more, 85+, PST!"

Not sure where exactly to go for dungeons at your level? the wiki has a Dungeon Timeline that lists 'em.

You can also use the Dungeon Finder to see what dungeons are available for your level.

Insert Fitzpizzle sound effect <HERE>

Join a guild that has 30+ members online during your 'prime time'. I think we had 60 online last night, and while raids are running, there is still room for grouping.

That being said, none of that grouping is at 85. Its almost exclusively at 95.

i don't think there is a single guild on BB that fits that criteria. people have been moaning about server merges for ages and server merges just temporarily fill in the gap..

i took the day off yesterday and there was about 5 PUGs all day and by the time i sent a tell they had filled the role i asked about.

the other guilds simply don't have that many actives and it is a constant rollercoaster for those that have more than 12 active players. it's almost a wasted effort trying to find the ideal guild without trying out other servers and wasting more money on transfers.

do a /who all and they all come up relatively empty, even if you consider half might be anon/RP(with the exception of raid guilds who are almost all anon/RP, not as if i want to raid again hardcore in this game with all the whiners who are left).

I can't say how many pugs happen out of guild as we tend to first invite from within. If there truly is not active guilds with 30+ members online at a time, then yes mergers are long overdue.

The first big suggestion to the original poster is to put a shout out in the server chat channels for a group, as people generally do not bother with the Dungeon finder or the LFG tool (I used to check out the LFG tool but stopped when the dungeon finder came out since no one was there for a while).