What is needed in Preperation for Chaos Descending

Discussion in 'Tips, Tricks, FAQs, and New Player Discussion' started by Darman, Oct 20, 2018.

  1. Darman New Member

    Can someone please point me to some guides that will explain exact what I need to do to catch up and be viable in the game at this point. Basically on Majdul. I bought the expansion and leveled to 110. My goal is to get my characters to a point where I can join a raiding clan but I have no clue the Must haves at this point. I am super confused.... Do i need to do the epic 2.0 stuff.. or what. A list of things would be great. I am even confused about player stats and caps. Basically if you can point me to some viable guides that will still be relevant in the new xpack I would really appreciate it.

    Thanks!
  2. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Unfortunately, I cannot point you to any guides other than possibly the beta forums. I can however tell you a bit about my experience.

    I have 3 ascensions at level 10 and 1 ascension at level 11. I am a 110 Troubie and 110 carpenter. I have been using Evania as a merc and a familiar I got from Familiars Wild daily quest, looks like a bone cobra. I do not have epic 2.0 and I do not have any ancient spells. Additionally, I did not take any of the equipment from the lockbox in the foyer, all that I did was buy the new mount for 0 copper from one of the merchants. I have had no trouble whatsoever killing anything or completing any task, having completed about 50% of the Adventure Sig line and about 80% of the TS Sig line so far. I am progressing slowly, but that is mainly because of the flu and real life things. I am not in raid gear and I do not have the best adornments available. I do have the shoulders and chest piece from the Summer Etherals and most of my adornments are from Days of Summer 2018, panda Yun Zi.

    So honestly, I cannot see that you truly have to do anything to be viable, I think any requirements would be those placed upon you by the raiders that you join.
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  3. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Okay, first of all, go to the wizard spire in Plane of Magic and gear up at Tishan's Lockbox, if you haven't already. There's an NPC standing right next to it.

    Adorns
    Next, adorn everything. Try to fill every single adorn slot. You will get some very useful white and orange adorns running the PoP quest line, and more by doing Yun Zi's little exploration quests. As you run instances, they will drop some orange adorns, even the Solo instances. If you craft, the recipe book Planar Adornments will have your recipes for the white adorns you'll need, or you can have someone make them for you. EQ2Library has some very helpful information about PoP progression you'll want to review that includes a lot of detailed info on the various adorns.

    Stats
    The best way to see what the stat caps and such mean is to go to your Character window and find the EQ2 Share option and make sure that's clicked. That allows you to look yourself up on sites such as EQ2U and Dragon's Armory. Look yourself up on Dragon's Armory. If you mouse over a stat, the tooltip will tell you a little about what that stat does, and show you the soft caps and hard caps. If you click on a stat, it will highlight each piece of gear that has that stat, which is extremely helpful when you go to reforge overcap stats into something more useful.

    In PoP, Potency is king of stats. You want as much POT as you can get your hands on.

    The next stat of interest is Resolve. For Heroic zones, you need your Resolve at a certain level, or else you take much more damage and are less effective.
    • Tier I: 378
    • Tier II: 471
    • Tier III: 558

    For Raid zones:
    • Tier I: 558
    • Tier II: 617
    • I dunno the values for T3 and T4.
    The hitpoint requirement is a minimum of about 40K hitpoints for PoP heroics (tanks need ~50K, or ~60K for brawlers). Some of this can come from AA. When you get ready to raid, you'll want at least 60K HP.
    EQ2 Library has a good article on PoP Mechanics as well as some sample builds for the various classes that you will find useful, and that will explain more about the various stats.


    Ascensions
    Next, you need to level all four of your Ascension classes to level 15 (the Achievement for this increases the effects of Tome of the Planes). The best way to do this is to run the PoP quest line, making sure you have Guided Ascension available. You get huge amounts of XP from the quests and missions, and the quest line gives you scrolls that increase your current ascension by one level every so often.

    When you have all four Ascensions to level 10, you get the Tome of the Ascended. When you finish the PoP tradeskill sig line, you will trade this in for Tome of the Planes, or if you don't craft, someone can make it for you. There might be better charms from PoP raiding, but for most people, you will be using the Tome of the Planes into the next expansion (coming next month).

    When you have all four Ascensions to level 15, you get an Achievement and

    Upgrading Your Gear
    You will be running Solos at first to upgrade your gear and get enough Resolve to do heroics. You will run heroics not only to get your Resolve up to raid levels, but also you will need Heroic daily and weekly missions to get gemstones. Hoard them, they're how you will "buy" T3 and T4 raid armor when you get a pattern drop in raid, also how you get the T3 black runes, etc.

    Beyond that, there are a number of things you can do to improve your gear, so refer to my earlier forum post on upgrading gear for details.

    Epic 2.0
    If you have time before the release of Chaos Descending in November, you might get at least the heroic version of your Epic 2.0. Even the raid version will be replaced pretty quick in the next expansion. However, I figure there will probably be an Epic 3.0 along someday, and you may need that Epic 2.0 to get it. I'd consider this a low priority for now.
    Tommara, Cyrrena and Syrano like this.
  4. Breanna Well-Known Member

    Same here I just have Mastercrafted gear which is better than you can get from the Panda or the box. I have just basic adornments mostly greater some superior, and the ones you can get from the Panda.

    I do have all my ascension leveled to 15 but honestly never hardly ever use them, the standard spells work just fine. I've made it through the crafting sig line on 9 of my crafters, and through the POP line with 3 working on the 4th, and I have had absolutely no issues killing anything.

    I agree with Cyrrena it will be the limitations put on you by the guild that you join.
    Cyrrena likes this.
  5. Syrano New Member

    Wow Sigrdrifa, that's a fantastic synopsis, A+! I'd only add some tips on leveling ascensions. Here's my ascension leveling advice. If you do this right, you can take a toon from 0 ascensions to max 15 in all ascensions relatively quickly without having to worry about Guided Ascension XP too much.

    Free Ascension Levels

    In theory you can get ascensions set to 15, 11, 10 and 5 for free, without having to do any XP grinding. Things you need to do:
    1. Get your toon to level 101, so they can unlock extra rewards from Yun Zi, the panda in sundered Frontier.
    2. Do Yun Zi's quests. When finished, you can get the level 15, 11, and 5 unlocks from him.
    3. If you bought the PoP expansion you ought to have a level 5 ascension unlock in your /claim inventory, you might even a have a level 10 unlock if you bought a higher tier.
    So you should now be at 15, 11, 5, 5 or 15, 11, 10, 10 depending on your rewards.

    Celestial Ascensions

    You will have to put some questing legwork in. But if you finish the PoP signature line you will get 3 Celestial Ascension scrolls which give you a free Ascension level. You also get about 10 more if you finish the Faction quest lines for the PoP factions (Pride Pakiat only gives 2, the other 2 factions give 4 each). The key is to use this total set of 13 or so only from ascension levels 11-15 on your remaining ascensions, this is because those levels take the most XP to get through, so maximize your returns and don't use these scrolls right away, be patient.

    That means you need to level two ascensions to level 11, either from 5-11 twice or one from 10 to 11 and the other from 5 to 11. This is where you should focus your ascension leveling.

    Overloaded Ascension Plan A

    If you bought the premium version of Planes of Prophecy, you will have 6 of these amazing things, which cap your guided ascension for 30 minutes and level you without a trip back to your trainer. While you're working your way through the faction quests, especially the grindy parts where you do a lot of repeat quests, you should use these, you'll level your ascensions VERY fast, every turn in of a quest is almost 12 million ascension XP, so early on you'll get almost an ascension level every time you turn in.

    The key here is wait to consume one of these until you're about to turn in 2 or 3 quests, pop one, turn in the quests then immediately go back out and do the next set, come back and turn in, depending on the faction quest line, your speed and focus, you can get 2-4 rounds of turn ins (30 minutes) off one potion. Should take no more than 2 hours or so to get your remaining ascensions all to level 11 or 12 or so.

    The fastest path of using these is to level by not using Pride Pakiat (they have the slowest mean time to take/turn in quests due to the sheer inconvenient distances you have to travel and lack of good portal locations).

    Guided Ascension Plan B

    If you don't have the premium version of the expansion and don't have access to Overloaded Ascensions this will take you longer. Make sure, every day, you visit the ascension trainer for your level 5 ascension in the Obulus Frontier and get your guided ascension scroll. It may be annoying but also pick up the weekly quest there for four additional ascension scrolls from the mission quest givers. As you earn coin rewards use 100 of those coins to buy Tears of Ro from the faction vendor (you'll need to complete the KA signature line to get these) which also reward nearly 7 mil guided ascenion xp.

    Manage these resources carefully to boost your level 5 ascensions to at least level 10, if you get one to 11 you're good, you'll have 13 ascension levels to go, and can then use all your celestial ascension scrolls to finish.

    Hope that helps!
    kerry33 and Tommara like this.
  6. Alphonsus Well-Known Member

    The white adorns from Yun Zi, sure get those. The rest of the white adorns from PoP, hold off, they get replaced in new xpac and use the same exact mat's. Celestial adorns. The orange adorns also get replaced, so save your mats (Infusions) for those (orange 7's), instead of wasting them on orange 6 from PoP, also same mats. Ignore any of the current gear, it's all replaced in next xpac, work on getting your ascension(s) to level 15, the xpac will take them to 20.
  7. Darman New Member

    Wow thanks for the input. I have several friends returning to the game for the expansion. Most of us havent played in about 2 years. Basically we all feel lost. This information surely helps. We just dont want to blow a lot of time preparing for the expansion only to find out everything we did means nothing. So basically the most important part for us is to not waste time doing things that will not be viable or needed when the expansion comes out. If there is anyone who has spent a lot of time on the test server please chime in on anything or any questlines you would avoid before the expansion due to the fact it would be meaningless for a player at max level, max AA, etc...

    Thanks!
  8. Bhayar Well-Known Member

    There's some really excellent advice here. Since you've mentioned raiding, let me suggest also that you make sure your 2.0 spells get leveled up. This may be less important looking to the future with the next xpac. That said, do not forget to use every means possible to get your ascension levels up past apprentice as well. It's too easy these days to get your basic spells to expert and up. And don't forget to check those lower level spells that never upgrade past 35-59. Virtually every class has about 3-4 of them.
  9. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    If you do the prelude, you get a very nice choice of an ancient spellbook, but this has to be done prior to the launch of course. From what was posted in another thread, even if you are not the appropriate level to receive the book when the prelude quest is done, you will receive it when you level up to the appropriate level. From what I have heard, the ancient spellbooks you receive, can only be used on a spell you have used a spellbook or researched for the prior level, if you try and use it on a spell that you chose through your alternate advancement pages, it will not work, so choose wisely.
    Tommara and Breanna like this.
  10. Kurei Hitaka Well-Known Member

    Sadly, Yun Zi's stuff does require a membership, apparently, at least now.

    However, this guide is really great. Makes me want to start up Ssilfalken, my Fury, since I still hadn't really picked a new main since coming back. Swashy's stuck on IoR and I am no fan of that server xD. Shouldn't be too hard to run all of PoP solo and then get to a point on Maj'dul where I can at least somewhat prep for the next expac.
  11. Tommara Active Member

    I've mostly been playing survival and building games lately, but I'm tired of the chores and have been feeling uninspired for building, so I've been trying to decide which old MMO I wanted to play (no new ones of interest until Rise of the Pantheon is released, if it ever does), by reading MMO forums until I ran into Sigrdirfa's advice, which gave me some clues on what to do if I resubbed.

    So I did.

    Thanks so much!
  12. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    And if you get the building itch again, check out the Norrathian Homeshow forum here... Norrathian interior decorating is a way of life! I get strokes of inspiration and do up a house every so often.
  13. Naneel Member


    On this, 3 of the ascension spells from each ascension class do get upgrades in the new expansion as you go from ascension level 15 to 20. So, if you train or upgrade your current ascension spells, it may be wasted if a new version of the same ascension spell is awarded in the new expansion.

    This site has links for all four ascension classes and it lists all ascension spells from 1-20
  14. Bhayar Well-Known Member

  15. CoLD MeTaL Well-Known Member

    A lot of people don't have the cash to upgrade them, and I never saw any of the pages drop.

    Have they changed the drop rate on them?
  16. Meneltel Well-Known Member

    Not that I have seen. And some of the books sell for as much or more than a krono on AB server.
    CoLD MeTaL likes this.
  17. kerry33 New Member

    At the risk of stating the obvious Join a good guild.
  18. Wimble Active Member

    There are some excellent answers in this post, HOWEVER, I fear new players or returners may be turned off by the depth of "requirements" haha.

    Im a long term raider and play the game daily, fwiw.

    I would focus on getting ADORNMENTS, CLASS SPELL UPGRADES (expert level u should be able to buy "cheaply") and ASCENSION LEVELLING in that order. Research the class each has a couple of "must have" class spells that you should prioritise upgrading

    Doing the POP TS TIMELINE gives the very very useful tome of the planes that carries a lot of the important stats, and will stay relevent in the next expac. Other than that, don't spend a lot of plat/cash on armor etc as it wil be replaced quickly in the new expac. However, obviously, you need something from the pop era to start with... The panda gear probably wouldn't be good enough imo.

    If its still available (im honestly not sure) do the very quick n easy prelude quest to get a free ancient spell, as you're beginning i'd chose a class specic ancient rather than an ascensiion.

    Im trying to prioritise for you recognising you dont have much time before the next expac and that u likely dont play 24 hours a day :D
  19. Ellah Active Member

    I’d read that the new adorns (the orange ones at least, maybe others too?) would use new mats, does anyone know the latest on this please?
  20. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    True. we have no idea what the actual stats on the new items will be, as right now on Beta they're identical to the Planar varieties, because their itemization hasn't been completed.
    Ellah likes this.