"Solo" Instances

Discussion in 'Tips, Tricks, FAQs, and New Player Discussion' started by Regn, Mar 5, 2022.

  1. Regn Member

    How do you solo "solo" instances?

    When it was your first time doing them:
    • What was your class?
    • What was your level?
    • What gear did you have?
    • What stats did you have?
    • What mercenary did you have?
    • What rank was your mercenary?
    • What gear did your mercenary have?
    • What mount did you have?
    • What rank was your mount?
    • What gear did your mount have?
    • What ascension did you have?
    • What level was your ascension?
    • What rank were your combat arts / spells?
    • What adornments did you have?
    • What deity did you have?
    • What thite-whatever that means did you have?
    • What food and drink did you have?
  2. Kurei Hitaka Well-Known Member

    Are we talking VoV specifically? If so I'll try.
    • Channeler, bow priests ftw.
    • 122 by the first one, every one after I was 123-125.
    • VoV Lockbox gear with Panda Adorns
    • Don't have a screenshot but lord knows I was not very high pot or res at that point.
    • I do not use a Mercenary at all currently on Brewtall, my luck from solos is bad and I have no good mercs. XD
    • Rank 1, since I really only have Daeron Ashenwing....and don't use him.
    • No special mount at the time.
    • Geomancer, Level 20. Primarily used for Mudslide, Erosion, and Domain of Earth. The occasional Xenolith as well for the Ward
    • My primary combat arts (I really only use Vengeful Arrow, Barrage, Precise Volley, and my 2 heals) were Expert minimum.
    • Hua Jubilee adorns and everything from Panda, plus a few of the basic reds from the Lockbox.
    • No Food/Drink or Deity.
    • Divine Critical, Potency, and Stamina are at 85. I have none of the Tithe spells, though I really should spend on some.
    I should note that so far, between RoS and VoV, I am discovering that Channeler is a very efficient, albeit sometimes boring, solo class. Construct has over 8 billion hit points and soaks most of the damage for me without ever moving his health bar. Dragon AA Ward and Death Prevent cover whatever damage my Construct doesn't absorb. Conduit Abilities do not have a "Spell Rank" system and they seem to have a really high Ability Modifier cap - Poison Bolt is hands down my highest damage on singles/bosses. Vengeful Arrow is the bread and butter, fishing for "Free casts" of Poison Bolt to keep my Dissonance rate down low. Conduit Abilities also do not consume Power, because without proper set up it is really hard to maintain Dissonance in a long fight (not impossible, though). Power Drain enemies are only an issue if they do not inflict curable ailments, as Channeled Cure restores 100% power if it cures an ailment (and this is group wide).

    Fury probably has Channeler beat in overall damage, but we have mobility, a cast-iron defense, and a wide variety of tricks. Definitely a solid choice for first runs.
    Hartsmith and Haretic like this.
  3. Balcerak Well-Known Member

    Beastlord
    125 (I did the repeats over and over till 125)
    Basic gear plus whatever I got from the quests
    Low stats (I wasn't a raider in previous exp)
    The bonus merc from the exp ultimate
    Maybe level 4?
    Almost no gear on merc
    The bonus mount (non-upgraded) from the ultimate pack
    mount was rank 1
    no gear on mount since I was waiting to be able to upgrade it.
    20 ascension in etherreal (didn't use much, they didn't do a lot of dmg)
    expert to GM in CA from previous expansions
    adornments were from pandas or tishes box
    I don't use a diety
    none
    none

    Please note it was much easier doing the timeline and solos as a BL than my alt who is a Zerker. Partly because the zerker has lower level combat arts. But mostly because the warder for the BL is a great aid for this level of fight, not so much in harder ones.
  4. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    I'm unsure as to what this info will help, but here goes!

    • What was your class?
    I have done the sig line and both weekly solo missions now on Channeler, Conjuror, Mystic, Necromancer, Paladin,
    Ranger, Shadowknight, Warden, Warlock, Wizard.
    • What was your level?
    For the solo instances that you encounter along the sig line, I was in the 122-123 range mostly. I was 125 for the other solo zones encountered in weeklies.
    • What gear did you have?
    The first toon through was my Warlock. She had Tishan's Lockbox gear (plus Panda stuff) and about 1/3 of her VoV profession spells at Expert.
    The next toons through were the other casters, and they started with gear as detailed in my VoV Gear Guide, supplemented by whatever solo instance drops I was getting on my Warlock.
    Before I was done with running all my toons through the sig line, I was doing H1 zones with the 'Lock, and passing down H1 gear for the alts.
    • What stats did you have?
    Um, not really answerable? I finished the Summer Ethereals right before VoV launched, so I had those buffs.
    • What mercenary did you have?
    On most of my toons, I had Captain Kalael Kel'Avar to start with. My main had her leveled to 20, the alts ranged from level 1 to level 5 or so to start. One alt had Monila Lu'Cesi leveled to 10. On all my toons, I hired Dakshesh, the Displaced ASAP, and started him leveling while I continued to use the Captain or Monila.
    • What rank was your mercenary?
    See above.
    • What gear did your mercenary have?
    I equipped all toons' mercs with gear from Tishan's Lockbox and Panda runes to start, and as I obtained erc gear from the solos, I used that to upgrade merc gear.
    • What mount did you have?
    This varied. My Warlock came into VoV using Ergrott, Cerulean Terror. The alts all had RoS mounts. As soon as they finished the sig line, they all got the upgraded version of Abzhu and started training it.
    • What rank was your mount?
    This varied. Ergrott was fully leveled. Most of the alts' mounts were anywhere from level 1 to 10 or so.
    • What gear did your mount have?
    Everybody had mount gear upgrades from the Vasty Deep zones, which means Void Etched. Generally, I pick the tack that gives Fervor, Fervor Overcap, Ability Doublecast, and Potency.
    • What ascension did you have?
    Most of my toons are Etherealists. I have a couple that are Thaumaturges and one Elementalist.
    • What level was your ascension?
    Since I have a Sage, everybody mostly has Ancient-level Ascensions. But honestly, if you do the efficiency calculations, you will find that Ascensions are not as important anymore as our regular profession spells have gained in power. The exceptions would be the Ascension buff, which is still really relevant and what I'd put the most effort into to start.
    • What rank were your combat arts / spells?
    I ran 13 toons through the VoV Crafting Sig Line to start before I even began the Adventure Sig Line, because I wanted flight. Accordingly, I was able to get most of the Scholars' recipe books even before the weekly tradeskill mission started rewarding a guaranteed book. So all my toons had Expert spells as soon as I could craft them.
    • What adornments did you have?
    Panda adorns for the most part. My Warlock has a set of Brawl white adorns.
    • What deity did you have?
    It varies. Most of my toons follow Erollisi. My raiding toon currently has Tribunal but when I get around to it she's going back to Erollisi (my guild is Order of the Rose of Erollisi). My healers either follow Tunare or Karana.
    • What thite-whatever that means did you have?
    Say what?
    • What food and drink did you have?
    My toons started VoV using the Zelniak Steak Chops/Pome Pome from RoS, and as soon as my Provisioner got her recipe book, my Warlock switched over to Karuupa Candied Kumquat/Vetrovia Midnight Vintage (she's my raider).
  5. Regn Member

    Thanks everyone. Someone in my guild confirmed this for me, and along with your replies it's made more evident, that I need to complete all of the quests between 2017 and 2022 from Yun Zi in Sundered Frontier in order to do play the game. I currently have 6600 Resolve, 430,000% Potency, and 12,000% Critical Bonus, yet I only do 1B - 5B DPS compared to the 500B - 1000B DPS that everyone else is doing, because of those adornment requirements.

    It's just a shame that the game didn't nudge me in that direction from the start, or that Yun Zi wasn't located on Vetrovia by the chest, or that it's not made more clear, like with a red flashing warning on my screen telling me to exit the VoV area until I visit Yun Zi in Sundered Frontier, and that there are no late game replacements for those adornments. The latter is usually the case, which is why player's warnings to do the panda quests have been ignored.

    I will spend the next couple of months working on my Yun Zi (panda) quests, then I will try to finish my VoV quest timeline. Hopefully I will get to play the game with everyone sometime in August, if they haven't released another expansion by then.
  6. AvenElonis Well-Known Member

    The nice thing is that there are writeups for all the panda quests - and they don't really take that long to do.
    Sigrdrifa likes this.
  7. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    I really doubt that it is the Panda adorns alone that are causing your issues. Tell us what server you are on and the toon name so we can look you up on EQ2U, and we can give you some very specific feedback!

    Near the start of the expansion, I wrote up a VoV Gear Guide that should help you figure out what all you need. It's not just the original post there, I have expanded info about spells, Ascensions, etc. further down the thread, too.

    As I already said, I very much doubt that the adorns are your biggest issue.

    Sounds like the ignoring was just stubborness and cutting-off-one's-nose-to-spite-one's face. Actually, some the red rune set adorns DO drop in VoV (thus far, all I have seen are Bloodbound Rune: Ascension of Love, Bloodbound Rune: Firmament of Passion, and Bloodbound Rune: Foundation of Excitement). They are just uncommon. There were RoS versions of the same runes as well, but they aren't quite as good as the Panda versions (Hua Jubilee are the best set from the Pandas).

    DUDE! Calm your t*ts! Each of the Panda quests takes maybe at most 15 minutes. The largest amount of time spent is traveling. You basically go to some low-level zone and click on some shiny spots then go back to the Pandas. And the wiki has a good walkthrough for each and every one of the Panda quests.

    Expansions happen around the Nov-Jan timeframe. They usually want it out for holiday gift buying.

    Without being able to look you up on EQ2U, here are my best guesses as to where you are falling short:
    1. Did you do the Summer Ethereals? If not, start doing all the VoV weekly missions you can to get the Shadowed Ethereal Trackers. As those add up, you can get nice buffs and a nice white adorn from the Ethereal Merchant, Kelaci Vol'Luissa, who you will find on a cliffside in Savage Weald (Reign of Shadows) at (16.07, 110.05, -719.27). Yes, you may have to do part of the RoS Sig Line to get to her. Or have a friend go there and Call of the Veteran to them, etc.

    2. Are your spells upgraded to Expert? If not, get busy harvesting for rares. You will need Baptista Roots for priests or mage spells, Aligned Ore for fighter combat arts, or Tsavorite for scout combat arts. You need two rares per spell. Look yourself up on EQ2U, click the Spells tab, and see what you will need.

    3. Do you have your Epic 1.0 and 2.0 spells, and do you have them upgraded? There's info on this in my VoV Gear Guide.

    4. Did you get your Ascensions up to level 20? the Pandas have a bauble that will increase them to 20 without any effort other than buying them for zero copper and examining the bauble. There's info on this in my VoV Gear Guide.

    5. Are you using the three different blue weapon runes from Tishan's Lockbox? That's Mystery, Embers, and Insight. You want all three for maximum Fervor. (Generally, Fervor > Crit Bonus > Potency > Ability Mod, but in VoV Potency has its own issues, see next item).

    6. You won't get really good hits/heals until your Potency is over 600K, and when you get to heroics, you want 650K, which may be a struggle. To start with, train up your mount and get 11 Svarni Bardings of the Potent on your mount.

    7. How did you determine your casting order for your spells and/or combat arts? You want to use your most efficient spells/CAs first, not necessarily the spell that does a big hit. Many times a smaller damage spell refreshes very quickly and can add up to a lot more damage than you'd think. Exact casting order will vary based on your stats and AA.

    8. How is your AA specced? Did you just take whatever automatically is assigned by the game? If so, it's unlikely to be a good spec. ask on your server who are the best players of your class and look at their AAs and learn from them.
    Rattophaxe likes this.