While I see the general consensus on Adventuring is at this point in the game racial traditions make little to no difference in your innate power at end game. What I can't seem to find (I can't believe how difficult it is to find game info for EQ2) is what the current thought is in regards to endish game tradeskills? I'm much more interested in the Tradeskills/worried about making an optimal trade character than I am adventurer and just don't want to regret anything. At the same time I'm having a hard time finding a decent woodworking ranger (that has a racial trait that helps) as I find all except Freeblood (not at the point I care to buy yet) extremely bland
No matter what, similar with classes, a Tradeskill will always be viable regardless of race. There are a few things, humans being able to gather faster than others, Halflings having more provisional success rate, I believe Dark Elves can make poisons better? It's small preferences in the end. But as for Woodworker.. I would do Wood Elf perhaps?
Thank you all, this'll help me move forward instead of fretting over what class to match what. I assumed looking at it that Wood Elf was far and away the winner but I find Human/all elves bland (probably from way too many years of EQ1 and too many similarities in looks) and I'm not into faeries, hence me trying to find a nice fit. Tbf, I did make a wood elf after your recommendation and even found him to look pretty cool with the alternate appearance from the character screen....then I got in game and saw the run animation and I had to nope out of there (yeah I get he hypocrisy coming from a frog but really dude looked like he needed to constantly find the nearest bathroom). I'll probably revisit the idea of making a Ranger another time.
Racial skills is a big deal on TLEs - faster gathering from eg woodelfs is nice on any server, even with the goblinspeed, combines, harvestkits and all that jazz, highelfs gets slightly more manas. While theyre mostly irelevant on live servers, a few of them are still ok nice - but woodelfs also have tracking, so its hard to not call them superior
That +2 success rate literally isn't noticeable at high levels. Whatever race you choose, they all play the same at high levels because the skills start to see diminishing returns. Being able to harvest slightly is always a plus until the bonus is negated by a tinkered harvesting tool that does it faster.
Zam still has lots of info even though it's not updated. There is a list of race info at: https://eq2.zam.com/wiki/Category:EQ2_Character_Races
