Several years ago I made a guide for levellocking and I’m still playing chars this way, I got comments about how people used my guide as a way to teach new players how to play the game, so I try to adapt it more so the beginning is a beginners guide and the last part will focus on levellocking Explanation of terms used in game You may have noticed people on the internet use acronyms for zones; if you aren't sure what they mean you can look them up here. Also you see terms like L&L, tradeskil and npc I’ll will go after them one by one to explain. Lore & Legend, are quests you can start by examining an item certain mobs can drop. More info can be found here. Need some hotspots? It’s advisable to buy 1 item of every L&L there is in game and keep them in a box in a shared bank slot (currently 49 of them). You only have to do this once, and you can then use these 49 items to start up the 49 L&L quests (don’t examine it again or you lose the item) Tradeskill; the skill to make items out of harvests you can use for yourself or for others. Also on EQ2 Traderscorner you can find several guides on how to tradeskill MC = mastercrafted; items made by players with the use of a rare item. npc = non player character. char = character. solo = playing only with your char molo = playing your char with help of a mercenary nodes: this are the things you go harvest from. You use them to get the raw materials for tradeskilling. transmute: an extra harvest skill that everyone gets; the skill to break treasured, legendary, fabled gear up in parts. These parts can then be used by adorners to make adornments which can be used to enhance gear or weapons. adorning: A secondary Tradeskill that allows a player to create Adornments. Info about recipe books can be found here. If you already have an adorner on your account and server you play on, it isn't necessary to level one up. Cause it's expensive to do so but if you haven't it might be worthwhile. tinkering: Tinkering is a secondary tradeskill which gives you tools or bonusses while crafting. Info about books and recipes can be found in the links. slider: you can find this when you press L, a screen pops up where you can allocate the AA points. In the above left corner of the screen you see a slider, you can move this from left to right and back again. Totally left means slider at 0%; none of the xp you gain is converted in aa. Totally to the right means slider at 100%; all the xp you gain is converted into aa points. Slider in between this two means the percentage the slider is on this percentage of xp gained will convert in aa. So for example set the slider to 40%: means 40% of all adventure XP earned (mob kill, quest turn in) goes to AA; 60% goes toward adventure XP Addition; if you aren't a gold member you can't move the slider, it will be locked at 50% Also on this Character Development and Achievements screen; every 9 levels you can choose a ability you want to enhance racial traits: there are two categories; innate abilities and abilities you can choose yourself. The abilities you choose yourself can be done every 10 levels in what you reach it in first. So in either tradeskill or xp. On level 10; 20; 30 and so on you can choose a new ability. However for example if you reach level 10 tradeskill first you don't have a new choice when you reach level 10 in xp. So in the end you only have 9 choices, not 18! The innate abilities are set in stone, you can't change or adapt those. For some people this can be gamebreaking so if you want to make a new char for this style of playing it might be worth to check this out. For more info check here. You can set your racial traits in the first tab when you press "L" grandmaster choice: Once every 10 levels, you are given an opportunity to choose mastery in a single spell. You're given a choice of four spells that you obtained in recent levels. The spell that you choose will be upgraded to Grandmaster tier, making it one of your most powerful spells. Because it becomes so powerful, you should choose mastery in a spell that you'll use frequently and that matches your playstyle. Grandmaster is a special rank, which is only granted to a few spells. The four choices presented to you are different each time you choose a mastery spell (once per 10 levels). Referring to our previous example, the Vital Intercession spell is offered as a mastery choice to Templars at level 14, so the Grandmaster tier of this spell is shown as being available in the spell's table.(source eq2 wiki). You can set your grandmaster choices in the first tab when you press "L" It's now also possible to make your own grandmasters,more info can be found here You'll also see terms as T1; T stands for tier as in series of levels and 1 defines the rank of this tier. So for example: T1 armour is armour you wear from level 1 tot 10. T2 armour means armour you wear from level 11 to 20, T3 armour you wear from level 21 to 30 and so on.
Time to play, first steps Choose a class, then race and a name you want to carry then choose a region you like to start in my personal favorite is Neriak, lots of harvesting nodes and shinies in the beginner area Use macro’s. Press O then go to second tab macro’s Click on a grey slot and you can create one. For every char I always use the same starting macro’s. Harvestmacro first use command type /target_nearest_npc and then use 6 boxes use spell with harvest, trap, mining, fishing, foresting and collecting in random order. Choose an icon. Press finish and put macro in a hotbar. Asign a short key tot his macro and you can then use it at every node or ? Brokermacro use command type /start_broker_anywhere Choose a icon press finish and put in in a hotbar Use large bags or boxes by them of the broker or let an alt make them. At this moment i use bubinga strong boxes for my bag spaces. If you start up fresh without alts try to get larger bags as soon as possible (make them yourself with tradeskill or get some money to buy them) When you are on a subscription use /claim (type it in the chatbox or make it a macro) Take all the free items you can get. Lots of potions for harvesting,extra xp and so on as well as mounts and houses. Do the Harvest quest in the area you started, the quest is a good thing to level up your harvesting skills. This quest can be combined with the first step in "A Gathering Obsession". It can be started in the Isle of Mara. (prerequisite: you must be lvl 5 either tradeskill or adventurer) Each step can be done in each tier and it pays well 18 gold per step completed. If you see shinies harvest them as well. When you have them in your bags, right click them and add them to your collections. If you already have collected them, keep it so you can sell it later on.
Second part, levellocking Open your browser bookmark these sites: Solo Timelines Heroic Timelines ZAM AA Quests In game do some questing until level 10 (when you reach it press L and set slider to 100) and then stay in the area you started in and harvest and max your skills out! Also don't forget to kill things cause each kill can give you a chest, and with smart loot, you are likely to at least adept all spells.. and if lucky get a few masters. Plus as an added bonus the things you don't need can be sold later through the broker (if not no-trade) or be transmuted (if treasured or higher) All skills maxxed out? Perfect! Now we can go to the next step. The Journey begins, but we have to do some certain things first to make life easier on the road. Go to your starting city Decide if you want to stay here or not (my chars always want to live in either Qeynos or Freeport (depending on allignment), but it's just personal choice. Every city has everthing you want. But an extra motivation for changing city to either Freeport or Qeynos is, that you then can do every quest in game cause as a Gorowyn citizen for example I couldn't do certain quests in the Freeport beginner area. If you do want to move go to the Ambassador (Typically this person is located near the guild registar) and ask for movement (not betrayal!). He will then point you in the right directions, the Ambassador will give you your citizenship papers and send you to the Ambassador in your destination city. Follow this ambassadors directions; you are now a proud citizen of the city of your choosing. You are in the city you have choosen (either you moved or not) now the first thing we do is purchase or claim (if you have veteran rewards) a home. This will give extra broker slots Talking about the broker go to one... and use your bound spell there. You will have to visit him/her lots so if you use your call to... you better come up near a broker. (If you are a paying member you can also use the command /start_broker_anywhere (tip make it a macro!) the bound spell then can be better near a banker!) Use /claim again if you have the 3 year award. It contains a special broker chest you can use to sell loot on broker cheaper (lower broker fees) Also 40 slots so that's good as well. Also if you have the 9 year vet award use that one too; another special broker chest with 50 slots. Check also the other options the veteran rewards give you. If you have items you can't use and aren't no-trade you can put them on the broker now, set the price and hopefully people will buy it from you. Also things you harvested can be sold but it might be wise to wait until you started your tradeskill career to put them on the broker. Cause you might need them for your combines. It's time to visit the tradeskill tutor (they are in the tradeskill area) to start our tradeskill career. Follow his quests so you get a basic idea how to tradeskill. The tutor also has the Advanced T1 books for sale. These are needed to make your own MC armour. This books can be to expensive if you just started so either let another of your chars buy them and put them in the shared bank or if you are in a guild, ask a guildbuddy of yours to get them and put them in the guild bank for you. Go to the banker right click and choose guild bank. If you're just starting and aren't in a guild then look how much they cost all together and go out kill stuff so you can get some money and for things to sell (also check the broker maybe people have bought things from you) when you enough have money gathered go back and buy the books. Craft a full set of MC armour. And while you are busy make some bags and boxes for yourself as well. (you can't have to many of them) You have a extra broker slots, you have bank slots and you have house vault slots you can put them in. When you have reached lvl 9 in tradeskill, go back to the tutor, you can now choose a new path in tradeskilling. Make up your mind on what you want to do. Do you want to make your own armour or weapons, or do you want to make spells for you to use. Or is jewels more for you? Read into the guides and the wiki page I gave in the beginning to make a good choice. Log off and visit ZAM; use browse, quests, Lore & Legend books. Make a lists of every book and where to find it. Comes in handy! Although you don't need the books anymore to start the quest it still gives you an idea where to find these monsters to get the updates. Do the same but now for heritage quests. (this will give you already a small guideline of the zones to visit and on what lvl). Tip: copy paste it to a writer program (Word, Writer) and print it out.
The necessary things are done, now what? 1. If it's your alt and you don't mind supporting it, have at least 3 gold on you 2. Go to TD; Remember the 3 gold? Well before going to the starter area, visit the language guy at the dock (buy all the language primers of him) Handy cause now you know you can start every quest you encounter in a long while. 3. Do quests there up to lvl 12 then return home and do all quests up to 12 in your city starters area, the opposing city starters area (watch out for guards), CL, DLW, Ant, GF, New Halas and the sewers. 4. When you finished those set slider to 0 and lvl to 12 (why 12?, cause you then can wear MC T2 armour) so harvest for rares so you can make it yourself or someone in your guild or to sell on broker so you can buy the necesarry armour. A bonus to start up in TD, quest loot is good and if you don't have your mc armour yet is very good to progress in. But MC armour is a musthave. you will wear it for a long time. 5. After you leveled to 12, set the slider to 100% again. You notice that when you gain aa you will have no problems to finish quests up to lvl 17. So go finish them as far as you can go (you'll notice for yourself how far you can reach). Do this in the zones you already leveled questing up to lvl 12. But don't forget to go to the dungeons (WC, BB) 6. Don't forget to visit the broker and banker! For the following there is not a special order but you do them at the same time or will do until you can level. i'll try to put the most important things first. · Try to get your mc armour and weapons as soon as possible. Don't forget rings, earrings, wrist items and so on. Guild trade skillers are your best friends. Just give them the rares (don't forget fuels and other resources!) and they will happily make you the items. · If you have some money on the broker it's time to visit your local sage (bookseller) Bookquests are your friend for aa. What I mostly do is buy every book the sage has. It will cost and not every book is needed in the beginning but you can store them in your chests in the bank · While in your home city. Visit every possible npc and look for quests (quests are your friend) · You also sometimes find a merchant in distress; save them and they sometimes sell you a special catalog book for that area; is extra quest for aa! You only have to do this once for every area. · Do the quests until lvl 17 in the zones the two wiki's say you have to go. If you are good watch out for guards in CL, evil watch out in Ant! If you have a higher alt you can use him/her to kill some guards so traveling in the zone and to get quests can be simplier.. Or you have to wait until you are above lvl 25 so you can kill them yourself or run by them and have enough hitpoints to take a couple of hits while you get the quest updates. · When you visit DLW, don't forget to go to the starter area. why? Well lots of collectables there! First find your own, but then collect to sell on broker! What you are looking for are cracked bones, scuffed shards and spotted butterflies. They sell for several gold some even for one plat. If you don't have a main to support you this is a must go. (thanks praor1 for the tip!) This is worthwhile everytime you visit DLW go here for collectables hunt. · In the meanwhile don't forget to return home once and a while. Visit broker, or use the macro I told you to create, to see if you sell and to sell new stuff. Also look for big bags in guild or on broker. Big bags are your friend. · Also get some chests/bags for your bank slots! The bigger the better! · You'll notice the books will also send you to the sewer sytems of both cities. don't forget to go there. Lots of quests in there. Also drop items that start quests · Some books are the history off the (fill in race) quests. This are quests where you have to visit places. some are easy, some are harder. Try to finish them when they are white. If not at least blue. · You'll notice, books are bag fillers (so that's why you need big bags) why are they fillers? Well you need the book for every update to progress the quest. The history off books you will carry until you are lvl 30! And there are a lot.. · Empty your questjournal until you only have quests lvl 17 and higher including book quests! · Set your slider to the left (0%) and grind up to lvl 17. · Set slider to 100% again · Finish all the quests in CL, Ant, GF, DLW, TD, New Halas, BB, WC, SH, FG and the sewers up to lvl 22 (You may even start some in BBM, Nek Forest and TS) · Done then set slider to 0% and grind to lvl 22.
When you reach 22 (you'll finish TD, DLW, lower and second sewer systems, Greater Faydark, New Halas, Antonica and CL but also Wailing Caves and BB) get your next MC armour set. (T3). Don't forget to set slider to 100% again! You may have noticed there is a system. First we leveled our char to level 12. Then we quested up to questlevel 17 before we leveled our char to 17 and quested up to questlevel 22. This system will repeat itself for the next tiers. So if we look at this in a more abstract way. The system for every tier is this: Level to [L]2 where [L] stands for the tens digit in the chars level. Then get your mc armour for that tier. Do quests up to [L]7 where [L] stands for the tens digit in the quest level. Then level our char to [L]7 and do quests up to [L+1]2. This repeats itself everytime. So if your char is at level 22,32,42,52 and so on get your new armour for that tier. You will then do quest up to 27,37,47,57 and so on. Level your char up to 27,37,47,57 and so on and do quests up to 32,42,52,62 and so on then you loop to the beginning of this sentence. It sounds more complicated then it really is. In addition to this system, there are people arguing it's better to level to [L]4 and then to [L]9 instead of the system I have laid out. This is due to to the fact you have a Grandmaster Choice on every 4th level in a new tier. I notice that I still have all the benefits when I level to [L]7 but I can understand their points. So it's personal choice and to be fair should also be mentioned here cause there isn't a set system in stone. About gear some people argue that for gear it’s best to visit agnostic dungeons (possible when you reach lvl 20) and also understandable if you want to level up another tradeskill then armourer. You can find the entrance to Agnostic dungeons in either Freeport or Qeynos. Doing it molo those dungeons will drop for you each tier at level 20-90 a new set of gear that are the best of all legendary gear you can get doing questing in that tier. The blue stats are arguably better then even some raid gear. The dungeons scale with your level and are generally available from level 20 to 94. To get all your gear (including weapons and jewelry) I'd suggest to do at least 3 dungeons per day: Forge, Charassis and Library are the easy ones. Also the agnostic dungeons are the only place in Norrath where YOUR class specific master spells will drops on more or less regular base. Reminder set your slider bar to 100% to make sure that all your xp will go to AA! Got all your gear and spells? Go out the dungeons and continue your questing to experience all of Norrath. Most important guideline, have fun! also thanks to Lasai, praor1, cloudrat, Kerberos, Stay, Beldrin, juwel, Alvane, Xaevyn, Kaiv and bluja000, doomdrake for their tips, suggestions or advice.
Having a harvest macro makes harvesting much easier! I've refined my harvest macro to this: /target_nearest_npc Cast Collecting (Collecting icon) /use I appreciate the write-up!
