I've started leveling a monk on a new free account (just bought the silver upgrade). I have played previously on another account and had a couple of level 92s before the latest expansion, but both of those got power leveled up so I could play with friends, so I've never actually leveled normally in EQ2. The recent flux of EQ Next stories got me interested in Norrath again and I figured this was a good chance to experience the full game. I'll be playing solo most if not all of the time. I don't know how much time I'll have to play, so I'd prefer not to go gold just now, unless I find myself putting a lot of time into the game and feeling restricted. Should I get the AoD expansion for the mercs? Being solo I guess they'd help, but it would also cut down on my coin and xp. Is being set to 50/50 AA slider going to be an issue? Or does that work out fairly well? Is there any compelling reason to go Gold prior to max level? I guess its mostly about Masters and Legendary gear? Is missing those going to be much of an issue during level stages? Is there a site or anything to find good leveling AA builds? Lots of max level ones out there, but not sure if they make good leveling ones. Any general advice for a relatively new player leveling up for the first time? Things to do/avoid?
I've played silver and I had a friend that only played silver from start to around 82, when he fell off the face of the earth. You can get by on mastercraft gear and expert level spells. Leveling 50/50 isn't a huge deal. There's a leveling pause at 90 to get caught up on AAs. If you're intent is to solo all the way and avoid spending real money on anything, you might want to try another class, like warden, inq, necro. I could be wrong, as I've never even looked at what a monk can do. I imagine you could beat things down fast enough. For the AA build, you can check out the AA window itself. They have a pre-made build on there for soloing. It's not the best, but it should help some.
Its not so much that I want to avoid spending money on anything, but more that works probably going to be very busy for the rest of the year, so I'd prefer not to spend $15 p/m and find I'm only logging in once every week or two. If say, a Merc would make a serious quality of life improvement to my game play I'd be happy to buy AoD, but if the thought was they're really not a big deal until level 80 or something like that then I might as well hold off. Likewise with anything else, if it was going to make the game a decent amount more enjoyable I don't have an issue spending RL $ on it. I mostly just want to be casual and enjoy the whole experience, learn the lore/etc, rather than race to max when I probably don't have time to raid anyway. I'm not tied to being a monk, it just read as a fairly good solo class, and fairly versatile once he is maxed out (for instance if I wanted to do plat runs). I'll no doubt create a couple of alts as well, if just to play both sides of the storylines.
Merc's (basically a mentored lvl 90) are viable from level 1 - 95, but remember the XP you get per kill will be slightly reduced while using them. Plat runs don't exist as you knew them. VP, PR, SoH only give roughly 1p per person in the party per chest (as do most if not all pre-end game plat chests). See this article for more info on that: http://eq2wire.com/2013/04/09/out-farming-5-year-old-zones-in-platinum-from-current-content/
Mercs also no longer take a coin split so the only cost is their initial hiring fee and their half hourly wage.
If you are playing and outfitting only one toon you probably don't need gold. Silver is very helpful and is a one time cheap cost. Quest and MC gear take you all the way to the 90s if you want. Even when you start wanting to use gear better then MC and spells better then expert, you will spend less on unlockers then on Gold. Especially if you get your station cash during a double or triple day. If I could cure myself of having a zillion alts, that is what I would do. Mercs allow you to do most any content you want on the way, and over all don't really slow the leveling because you kill faster. Monk and a healer merc would be unkillable We don't know exactly when, but they are about to change it so that you don't have to buy all of AoD, you could choose to just buy the parts you want. (If you are on AB you will need Mercs and Dungeon Maker - so you can run my dungeons....)
You can run the dungeons without AoD. Unfortunately you do need to have AoD to be able to spend the tokens you earn.
Oh nice, thanks for letting me know. That helps tip the decision. I guess I should check out the other AoD features and see if its worth getting the whole thing or holding off if I feel I'll only want one or two specific parts. [edit] Actually, it all looks pretty cool, I think I'll grab the AoD expansion for now, but otherwise stick to Silver until it feels like Gold would be worth it.
Monks are some of the best soloers in the game and you'll be fine without mercs. Fighters in general are very strong and monks have a self heal, feign death to get out of tricky situations, and are up near the top of the dps fighter-wise. Mercs basically make group content doable as a soloer, but any class can solo the stuff designed to solo. In a few months the next xpac will come out, and at SOE live it was mentioned the AoD features will hopefully be made a la carte then too, so hold off till then and you may be able to pick up just the mercs for $10 rather than $40 for all the features you may not use. There's now a standard AA builds in the game so you can get some basic setup straight away. Main reason for me to be gold is selling on the broker (quite useful to earn coin), changing the AA slider so you don't have to grind AAs at 90 to meet the requirements, and of course equiping better gear. But if you only have one character, it's probably cheaper to just unlock what you want to use.
