Heya, I was wondering if the quickest way to reach the 90s would be grabbing a merc and just grind out the dungeons listed here : http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeon_Timeline or would questing still be faster? I am new to the game so friends power leveling me is not an option and i still want to learn my class on the way to 95 hehe Hope one of you vets and/or some new people can share their experience Thanks!
Questing is slower because of all of the running around you end up doing, but I find it a lot more immersive than running around the same dungeon over and over. At 90, you can do the Great Divide, Eastern Wastes and Withering Lands quests (WL quests will net you good gear) in DoV. Thats just my opinion, I love visiting new dungeons and like to mix them in with leveling/quests, but I don't want to grind them. I guess I just enjoy exploring and experiencing all of the content.
The quickest way is to powerlevel, obviously - but the quickest way to get there and actually play is what Snowhaze suggests. The combination of questing and dungeons is fairly quick, overall. Soloing a dungeon, even with a merc, is not the best use of your time, if the dungeon is your level. Even if you can kill heroic mobs your level, it will take awhile to kill each one. You want questing or a huge quantity of green mobs for quick leveling. That said, it would be a shame to miss some of the lower level dungeons.
Not sure if you're into crafting, but whenever i level a new toon, i level a crafting class on it first, at least to 85 , to be able to use flying mounts, then i find the running back and forth, questing while leveling goes by much quicker. Not to mention that you now have your own 85+ crafter that can make things that you'll need as you level, like spells, armor, etc. I guess you have to enjoy crafting for this method to work lol, but after leveling a few characters this way, i couldnt imagine "hoofing" it back and forth between quests anymore. Good luck with the leveling
Opinions vary, as some folks out there still swear by questing. I have always preferred a heroic dungeon group over anything else for XP. That said, those can be a little hard to find at times, especially at the low levels. In between groupings, pick up a craft -- crafting is very well profitable, if for nothing else than to be that much more self sufficient and NOT have to spend all those hard earned monies just keeping up with basic equipment/spells. Finding a good guild can also help with both - I think many crafters (myself included) will happily do handcrafts for guildies essentially for the asking, and many adventurers are also willing to mentor down (or log an alt) to do a dungeon run with guildies. Some folks will do this randomly outside of guild as well, but if you find the right guild, there's a stronger tendency there. As for what class to play - that varies from person to person. Make your best guess for your first character and play that awhile -- but be open to trying a few others thereafter! I got my own #1 preference (wiz) right on the first guess, but I didn't get around to my #2 and #3 (warden / pally) until several toons later. Having alts with completely different functions (i.e. tank / healer / dps / support) can also be helpful to finding groups =)
Hi I'm also a new player joined 2 months. I found questing is easier than Dungeon. If you don't like the back n' forth, you can skip some zone in "Golden Path" and start some good zone asap. I personally recommend Sinking Sands, Tenebrouth Tangle, Kylong Plains, Nathar and Stonebrunt highlands. These zone are doable WAY below the level they recommend. And have good repeatable hack n' slash quest (Doable to red mob to me ) if you like. Red repeatable quests are way better than Dungeons for soloer. Just find the right stat to pile. Some player told me to stack MA below 80 with cheap gear from broker and forget any other stat. I tried and it's wonderful... I never have chance to get to back of mobs as a Brigand with 300 MA in lv 60... Caster should be different but I'm sure if you ask in game ppl will share there tip.
The zones the post above listed are good, once you get to those levels. A merc does take away some of your XP (I think 33%), but the increase in kill speed, and more importantly the level of mobs you can take on without needed a full rest after each fight more than make up for that (IMHO). Once you can do Kylong Jungle (or whatever the name of that zone is), there are eight city writs that you can pick up at the Kylong Plains dock that are all in the same area (solkar travel once in the middle) before you head out (I think they're the 2nd option when you're level 70, and the first when you're level 75 - but at that point you just do it to farm status, not for levelling). With a merc you can clear them in ... 1/2 hour to hour (i never timed it, and I'm past that now), but doing that nets you some decent XP if you kill everything, some nice repeatable quests, over 100k status points a run, a good chance to find some valuable shinies, and plenty of harvest nodes if you're into crafting or just looking to harvest and sell the rares. Edit: there's also a couple non-epic named that drop ornate or exquisite chests, but they're not always up.
Powerleveling is definitely best, but there are quite a few viable options for leveling. This site : Free Mmorpg Guides have a lot of guides for leveling, including powerleveling and a good guide to Bonus experience which can help leveling speed.
I am sure there will be arguments, but depending on how much you play it may well be faster for you to build three (or more) characters at the same time, particularly if you're on a new account. It sounds backwards, but it's true, and here's why: 1. Having non-zero vitality is the only viable way to level with speed, and this is true regardless of whether there is a double xp promo running or not. Double xp days merely accentuate these points. Vitality tends to expire quickly when you're leveling fast (there's math associated with the expiration rate so I'll spare that) and once you lose your vitality 200% bonus, you're generally slowed to about half speed (best case) or 1/3 speed (if you don't have any good potions left.) 2. The newest of new accounts has only 77%, 55%, and perhaps a few 20% potions. (Excluding special promo 100% of which there can be a few cases.) Without vitality, this amounts to precisely the amount of an increase in your latent experience gain rate (100%= latent excluding chronomentoring situations.) Thus you begin your trek to 95 at 177% *if* you opt to dig a potion out at that point. There are reasons why you should not do that yet, which I'll go into in a minute. 3. Vitality accumulates hourly in discreet 0.5% bits, not continuously at, say, 0.00825% per minute. The fact that it accumulates consistently is important because you can predict how long it will be before your vitality "fuel tank" is full again (to the hour) and--because it is discreet--you can use it to take full advantage of the incremental gains of it if you are using dungeonmaker--which still at this point can be used effectively if you design your dungeon well. Alright, so with that background, here goes. This ad hoc explanation applies if you play for a limited amount of time (between rouhgly 20 and 30 hours weekly) and will change based largely on play time but also to a lesser extent account age. 1. Roll your first 3 to 5 "best guesses" for characters. Better still, roll all seven of your slots and spend a bit of your time on each, in turn, getting your little team ready. What I ultimately like to do in this situation is just buy a couple extra character slots (at least two)--in that case you can build nine different characters, you pay the same amount monthly, and now you can have ALL the crafters instead of just 7. This should take 2-3 hours if you're not rushing it. Total: 2-3 hours. 2. Consult crafting guides such as EQ2traders corner liberally to choose races that are at least somewhat suitable for your crafting skills, or simply choose human. 3. Once The Nine are built, proceed immediately to the crafting trainer, speak to her and gain two crafting levels instantly. The PITA part here will be getting them each to level 10, but don't worry too much (yet.) Total: still, approximately 3 hours. 4. If you are a hardcore soloist (read: "don't help me I don't want your help") then go first to a place such as darklight woods, kill sableflame elementals or skeletons for a while, collect 1-9 transmutables, and offer them in bulk in chat for 15 gp each. With your initial bags all open, you should be able to fit 50 of them (taking 2-3 hours to collect, optimally) and then you'll have your nest egg of 7.5pp. Be shrewd with it or you'll be boring yourself with repeating that process needlessly. Total: 4-6 hours time played. 5. Buy 6 x bearhide backpacks (should be less than 1 pp, particularly if you go to the seller's house. Now you can hold 264 items and will be able to swap your bags between your characters using the shared bank (note: you can't swap initial bags through shared like that, as they're no-trade.) Total: 4-6 hours time played. 6. Use a small amount of your nest egg on getting yourself the resources necessary to level your crafting, then manually level your first character to the beginning of level 9. Then talk to trainer again, presto level 10. Total: 5 to 7 hours played. 7. Proceed to Qeynos or Freeport and grab yourself an apprentice. Buy a cheap house, set your apprentice there, pick a research item suitable to the class you're most interested in playing, and then go perform the daily task and turn it in. Total: 7 hours likely. Keep in mind that the researchable items 1) can only fit certain slots and 2) are only level 10 at this point. 8. Since #6 does not take much time (less than one hour, typically, for each character, leveling 2 to the beginning of 9 tradeskill) repeat for ALL your characters. Set access rights to your home for all of your characters then stash ALL your apprentices in the same location, if possible (if you have a split due to alignment it may be easier to have a good house and an evil house,) At the end of step 8, you will probably be at 15 or 16 hours total played time, over a couple days. This is good--your researched recipes will be finishing up. 9. Follow up all of your apprentices daily. This is CRITICAL in importance, and one of the main reasons for taking the time to go through these steps. This is a TIME SAVING technique, which will soon become obvious. At level 10, the apprentice drop rate for humming reactants appears to be much higher than the comparable drop rate for level 90 colossal reactants. That means that in your first week of play, if you started The Nine on days 1 and 2--4 on the first, five on the second, say...that by the end of 4 days you will not only have nine researched (and appropriate) recipes but you will also have reactant gear that you made yourself which will render you nearly indestructible to comparable level mobs. Keep in mind, you're still at this point adventure leveling at a leisurely pace--for one because you have more than one character you're trying to "force" up. **ALSO: having these tradeskillers is akin to having a potion farm. They will quite regularly drop potions, one of which you'll be interested to know is a +25% x 6 hour experience potion. This is ideal for questers since questing does involve sort of discreet bundles of experience separated by somewhat long gaps of no experience at all vs. adventure leveling which tends to be smaller bits more consistently. 10. Once your crafters are level 10, they will begin accumulating vitality (note: this *may* happen at level 3, but I know for a fact it doesn't happen at level 2--i.e. at the initial talk to crafting trainer point.) Your adventurer side is already gaining vitality while you're doing your crafting prep work--that is the reason you needn't rush to start adventuring. You might compare it to a trip cross country: what sense does it make to start the station wagon and get on the road immediately when simply by adding a couple hours of prep work you'll save DAYS off your journey? 11. Discipline yourself to *cycling your crafters* just as you will soon discipline yourself to *cycle your adventurers* based on vitality. What this means is, on day 3, for example, talk to your apprentice, grab the daily from him, and then go to a crafting station. REPEAT the recipe 10 or 12 times (pick a definite number)--realizing that you're getting nearly as much experience by repeating that recipe which costs only 4 units of materials and a couple cheap fuel as you would by crafting something out of what would be your level 10, 11, etc. recipe books--which cost more in materials. Once you have 10 reps or so done, stash them in the bank (non-shared) and go back and talk to your apprentice again. Then log in crafter #2 and repeat. Breaking here for a moment, realize that week #1 in this game is crafting week. It is a week you must devote to crafting if you are a new player and want to give yourself a reasonable time adventuring afterwards (in the case where you're more or less going it alone and without gifts from others.) It is a week in which you will undoubtedly enjoy the satisfaction of getting the first two or three precious reactants and the corresponding satisfaction of crafting them into whatever you like for your very own character. You will be able to actually see how superior they are to virtually any other equipment you can get your hands on at those levels, and they'll no doubt buoy you up to 20. 12. Once you have spent about a week familiarizing yourself with getting around, and you've run around a bit, you'll have no trouble blazing through the first ten levels (particularly if you grab a merc.) Remember, you can afford one because you put the time in getting a nest egg. You don't want to waste anything, if you can avoid it. So, once your accumulated vitality expires, suspend your merc, do your daily turn in (at this point you already have 10 x each required item stocked in the bank, so all you have to do is talk to the apprentice) file whatever potion you might get, and then wake up toon #2, etc. 13. Craft yourself some murmuring reactant gear for the character you like the most--see if you can exchange a service with a 95 crafter to do a level or two of experimenting on it, if possible, and then continue repeating step #12 to the extent your play time allows within the confines of the vitality you have. Do not use claimable potions, and most particularly do not use claimable VITALITY potions at this point. Doing that will hurt you in the long run, because they are much better saved until the point where the increased percentage will yield a higher net of experience. (This might be compared to having a 77% potion you could use on a stock: would you prefer to use it on 20 shares you have of a penny stock or 150 shares you have of IBM?) Alright I've spent an hour on this which was what I'd allocated. There's quite a bit more but it will have to be later. Devastatore, of... Antonia Bayle Crushbone Freeport Guk Oasis Permafrost Unrest
The quickest way to lvl is to go to a website buy some plat and have a lvl 95 mentor you and run your through dungeons. Tell them you want all items that drop. Once this is done you can sell / transmute everything and have some gear to go with it.
lulz I was wondering when you would notice it missing. You can come by the house and get it, just make sure you bring your gnome. Oh, and some ketchup.
people apparently were leveling like crazy with dungeon maker but that got nerfed. Unfortunately it made DM apparently a waste of time and money for normal use since exp and rewards got nerfed for normal soloing too. good leveling spots more crowded now. I guess mercs now are way to go if you got money to buy expansion and dont mind another pet tagging along.
