A Guide to Chaos Descending

Discussion in 'Tips, Tricks, FAQs, and New Player Discussion' started by Hurtsbad, Jan 17, 2019.

  1. Myrkul New Member

    I came to this forum to basically write a thread like this. I was going to title it "So you're in Chaos Descending, and you want to get into heroic groups..."

    I'm super thrilled to see so much of the work here done, but maybe we can consolidate it and find a way to make the original post sort of the "bible", where people don't have to read all the subsequent posts with back and forth, and contradictions..

    It's been a great conversation, and a lot of great stuff.. i'll try to consolidate it all and maybe Hurts can update the OP with what I share?
    Feara and kerry like this.
  2. Rhodris EQ2Wire Ninja

    Only a 30 minute window after first posting to edit anything, unfortunately.
  3. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Go on Norrathian Homeshow with it; we can edit things there indefinitely. :)

    Uwk
    Breanna and Rhodris like this.
  4. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Talk to Sigrdrifa, maybe she can wiki it and link it to the OP?
    kerry and Breanna like this.
  5. Hurtsbad Member

    Hey guys!

    Just wanted to say thanks for all the great additions to this. I wish I could update the original post to consolidate all of the wonderful additions that people made into one happy home. But it seems I cannot edit it? Maybe some one can put it all on the Wiki.

    Hurts
    kerry likes this.
  6. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    I'm currently involved in two big projects: mercenary documentation and HHE18... we'll see.
    Breanna likes this.
  7. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Yes, the mercenary project is one of my big three. Now one of my big 3 is over so I only have 2 big ones left. I refuse to take on another one until at least one of my big 2 are complete.
    Breanna likes this.
  8. Steelriver New Member

    I was thinking about playing. This post made it look about as fun as eating glass.
    Eliana, Observing and Meneltel like this.
  9. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    I'm sorry you feel this way. Good luck finding a game that you will enjoy and have fun in.

    As for my comment, if it swayed your decision. My 3 big projects were not required for any sort of normal game play. My first big project was designing and decorating a home that was acceptable for an ingame binding ceremony for friends, that has been completed and is off my list. My second big project is the Mercenary Project, Sigrdrifa and I set out to collect the stats and data for all the mercenaries in the game at certain baselines and get them onto the Wiki so they are available to all players for comparison. My third big project was acquiring a prestige home, placing crafting tables and depots into it and filling those depots with harvestables, food, and fuels so that crafters that are involved in Homeshow Swaps and Events have a place to craft and materials to use if they are from another server.

    So project 2 and project 3 are purely community projects.
  10. Meneltel Well-Known Member

    Project 4: A Vroom Broom from Ttobey… or we make a strange fruit hanging from a tree out of him!
    Prox, Cyrrena, Breanna and 1 other person like this.
  11. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Yep! There are other things to like about the game in general and the expacs specifically; for a while now, ever since KA, I've primarily gotten the expacs (when they went on sale, for the Collector's Edition) purely for the prestige house and building block sets. I've barely scratched the surface for ToT, even (other than the Frostfell questline that gets you really, really easy faction!), and the only reason I've been doing that is for the tradeskill stuff there.

    So, every time I hear about how complex things are getting, I just shrug and tend to my growing Horde of below-110 level "kids" (and their crafting apprentices) and focus on getting them what they need, gear-wise, that I can do for myself on a good crafting station somewhere. ;->

    And decorating. :)

    Uwk
    Cyrrena and Breanna like this.
  12. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Oh that is not a project!! That is an ongoing campaign that shall never end and shall only get bigger and more elaborate with time until the BROOM MOUNT is available for all Norrathians to ride at will across the skies and there will be much rejoicing across the lands and the planes.
  13. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

  14. Tommara Active Member

    Useful post, Hurtsbad, thanks!

    However, I’m with Meneltel et al. This return to EQ2 has been more like a job (last content I played was ToV), and I only play games for fun.

    Other MMO’s that I’ve played for years, don’t make it so hard for returning players to JUST BE VIABLE IN A GROUP, except perhaps Anarchy Online (impossible to play without reading out of game spoilers, which EQ2 has now become, if interested in grouping), and AO is probably closer to the original EQ in difficulty, but much easier to solo. If you’ve been playing it since it began, as I have.

    I used to despise games where the devs established the gatekeeping, such as WoW, FF14, and The Secret World/Legends (because some builds were easier to pass the tests)(but I liked them lots before the gatekeeping!), but this return to EQ2 has made me appreciate the skill component that those other games require in order to be eligible to join automatic team formation, which EQ2 doesn’t even have (nor did TSW/SWL last time I played, but you had to pass the Gatekeeper test to raid, regardless if your raiding guild was willing to accept you as is. That’s just dumb, too).

    Instead, EQ2 is just based on gear, using weird, arcane stat requirements (to my ToV eyes) such as resolve and fervor (potency, yeah, I get from playing before), and no method for automatic group formation. You have to hawk in general chat for LFM, and hawk if you want to join a group.

    All of which is unpleasant to my jaded eyes.

    And I have max level jeweler, armorer, tailor, sage, woodworker, and provisioner, who have all completed the CD tradeskill quest line.

    My spouse has the others.

    We have, of course, made millions of plat. Ridiculous amounts.

    It took lots of work to get there, even with most of the crafters at 90-ish when we returned.

    So we’re perfectly suited to get our adventurers kitted out (110 paladin, templar, coercer, mystic, ranger. 90's: troubador, warden, beastlord. 80's, wizard, dirge)

    But it’s just not fun, ya know?

    The following post succinctly describes what is not fun:

    “This is a great thread with some really great advice. The response "why bother if you're going to swap it anyway" is the attitude which is keeping people from success in heroics. You must must must infuse infuse infuse. Why bother? Because otherwise you are sandbagging your group into failure. This xpac is balanced around refined INFUSED experimented reforged MC gear. Until people embrace that notion they will fail repeatedly in T1s much less T2s. Previous xpacs have not been balanced this way and so people have a serious attitude adjustment in store for them.

    Despite the fact I have the ability to do so, at no cost pretty much, just time, which I actually have plenty of, I just don’t choose my time doing things which are not fun. I'm doing other things instead. But I do love EQ2, hence this post.

    Attitude adjustment?

    Nah.

    The original EQ taught me to never, ever again play a game that is not fun. Which EQ2 always has been until now.
  15. Observing Active Member

    I question the advice of reforging ability mod into potency. That seems to only give about 35 potency in exchange for 30,000 ability mod. And I am interested in the math on a 4500+ potency MC item. Can you post a link that shows a character with one equipped?

    But this thread does explain why my rare wood and ore is flying off the broker if every raid toon needs a total of 3000 of each plus 1000 for each weapon upgrade
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  16. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    I fully see and understand your position on this. I do not play any game to be a job, the projects I take on are to help friends or to help the community and are fully my choice. My question is, do you simply want to be viable right now upon your return, in a group or right now upon your return, in a high end content group?

    I have not stopped playing, I have over 1200 resolve, but I highly doubt that I am viable for T1 or T2 high end content Heroic Groups. I can do the Heroic Groups in PoP just fine and could when PoP was the current high end content. I can do the solos and duos for everything in the game. I see every week in the patch notes that the raid content mobs in CD are having their health and such reduced, why is there no tweaking being done to the T1 and T2 Heroics, I see far more players bringing issues about those to light than anything with the raids?
  17. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    • Solo encounters have no resolve requirements
    • Heroic Tier 1: 1060
    • Heroic Tier 2: 1334
    • Raid Tier 1: 1512
    • Raid Tier 2: 1672
    Where you're going to probably be challenged is in getting enough Potency. I'd say 65K Potency is the least you would need for T1 heroics, and the more Potency and Fervor you have, the more effective you are.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  18. Tommara Active Member

    Sadly, I'm not even sure I understand the question.

    I'm fine with the solo content, both tradeskill and adventuring. Zero issues with either one thanks to much information posted by players. I doubt if I would have been able to solo from 90-ish to 110 without that (which didn't use to be true, but now is due to the quirkiness of Plane of Magic - long combines for crafters, faction silliness for adventurers - but easy due to players helping us through that. Plus the fact that we've kept our apprentices happy over the years and so have acquired lots of potions of progress which are so much better than the crappy ones we get from doing CD tradeskill dailies, but seem to be no longer available?

    And so I've quit doing them, since the chance of getting something useful is too rare to bother.

    What I have a problem with is that dropped gear from soloing content is insufficient to be viable in a group for the easiest group level content. The easiest way is to be a crafter. Despite the fact that my spouse and I have the ability to make anything necessary, that process is not fun.

    I think it would be much more fun for all players if there was random chance of gear dropping from solo content that is viable for group content.

    Or at least, anything more fun than:

    "You must must must infuse infuse infuse. Why bother? Because otherwise you are sandbagging your group into failure. This xpac is balanced around refined INFUSED experimented reforged MC gear. Until people embrace that notion they will fail repeatedly in T1s much less T2s."

    The other option,of course, is to play something else. Which I've been doing for the last month or so.

    I'm only posting here because I've loved this game and do not want it to die.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone and Rhodris like this.
  19. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    I mean do you only care about others wanting to group with you no matter what level the content is or do you only want to group with others if it is the highest level content?
  20. Tommara Active Member

    Well, as I stated, I have five toons at max adventure level, only one of which took advantage of the free 110 for buying Chaos Descending. The others were all soloed, i.e., soloing to max level was not a problem, especially thanks to all those who contributed to information on how to get through it. Nevertheless, the faction stuff was still annoying for my first adventure toon, who did it backwards by doing the adventure content first, then the crafting. So much easier to get the faction as a crafter in Kunark Ascending content. Nevertheless, it was just more tedious going the adventuring route, not hard (with the caveat that I had access to whatever master crafted gear I desired, including spells, food, and ammo), and I can't even imagine how grouping to 110 would be easier (because they completely borked getting experience from anything except questing, and what are the odds that you'll find someone doing the same quests you are? I had a hard time just completing the KA Signature line, since it depends on a Public Quest that people rarely do, although people do announce when they are doing it from time to time, so was finally able to finish it).

    I just think it would be more fun from the adventuring end if there was a possibility of getting useful gear for doing heroics from quests or drops that's better than master crafted made from refined mats, experimented, and infused. My interest isn't very high for joining PUGs at all. But I am even less interested in making refined MC, experimenting, and infusing it.