Vasty Deep: The Abandoned Labs solo (Toil and Trouble)

for me the first mob dies in under 60 secs.solo. pretty much all of them besides hag and the x2's. must be my gear!

my bruiser had all that and more but struggled in vasty deep solo until he bought the merc captain kalael. now he pretty much breezes thru the zone like my paly that also has that merc(free). 200k and you can do vasty deep

Do you understand the script? When he transmogrifies you, you get an uncurable arcane debuff and an illusion to match one of the specimens in the tanks hanging from the ceiling. You need to stand on the pad under the corresponding specimen. Your arcane debuff then becomes curable and you can cure it with a spell or potion. I'm assuming the necessity to cure and it doesn't just poof when you stand in the right place as that's what it does in heroic. I don't know about solo because I kill it before the script starts.

"It'll take Norrath's exceptional heroes to survive the primal terrors and arcane forces found in the new lands of Vetrovia." I'm a casual player who can't get through Toil and Trouble yet. I hope I didn't waste my money on this new expansion.

Try asking on your server for help. There may be others that are trying to get through the zone and would welcome the company. Once you start getting gear upgrades from there, it will become better.

On Beta and VoV Difficulty
As with the past few expansions, there is Tishan's Lockbox near the zone-in to the new lands, which will allow you to upgrade armor if needed.

I haven't been in Beta the last day or two, but initially, I was one-shotting everything (disclosure, this was my raid-geared warlock, so...) and others were reporting the same thing. The devs will undoubtedly tune up the mobs so that each fight takes a few strikes from someone geared from Tishan's Lockbox (you want the fights to be a little challenge, not hard, and not too easy).

On getting a toon into Vasty Deep Now
So, on new characters in the Vasty Deep zones... I am playing catch-up on coins because I was out for five weeks, so I have used what 120 boosters I had in /claim and the new one from the pre-order. For the baby toons so boosted, I crafted them a full set of expert spells, and then crafted Ascension spells (buying Adept and Master or at least the Illegible Scroll Pages that allowed me to craft those as well). And I had to figure out again how to get them leveled versions of their Epic 2.0 spells,including the initial apprentice version.

With all that done, I went to Tishan's Lockbox in Fordel Midst and nabbed one of everything, including a set of armor for a merc. This got me my "starter" red adorns.

Next, I went to the Panda Quests in Stonebrunt Frontier and completed up through and including this year. I compared the unlocked armor and runes to what my baby toons had from Tishan's Lockbox and upgraded where possible (including the merc armor).

Thirdly, I made sure I had the best mount and healer merc I could get (even on my healer toons). You can get the hiring coin for the Captain merc on the broker for not too much plat (YMMV on what "too much" is). Running Overseer Missions has gotten me tons of barding slot unlockers, and that lets you get at least six barding slots open on a mount, which you can then fill with Health bardings from the Pandas... you have to buy one, stick it in a slot, then buy the next, and so on. The mercs I went ahead and leveled with coin (/grimace -- Or, you can use the traditional "time" method, or use Overseer-rewarded merc training potions if you wish) to the point they had seven armor slots opened, then stuck the armor I'd prepped for them in those slots.

Even my wimpiest healers are able to get through RoS solos at this point.

Lastly, I went to the ethereal merchant (on a cliff in Savage Weald near the Doomhilda mercenary). Ethereal "coins" are why I have been gearing up my alts, so as I unlocked stuff on my main, I was able to get the white adorn and the boosters.

If you have zero ethereal "coins" right now, you can still get them, by having your newly-geared toons run RoS Solo zones and then go stand and look pitiful near Grungrina the Mad in Savage Weald until you can get a group to kill overland names (be sure you have picked up the weekly RoS solo and heroic overland quests!) This will get you ethereal "coins", and I hear tell that they don't plan to shut down the ethereal rewards for those quests at all this year, so you will be able to keep going back for them (good because of the boosts for some of your AAs!)

Along the way, I upgraded some items from drops I got doing solos (on both the baby toon and their mercs!). Then I started into Vasty Deep. The key to getting a baby toon through Vasty Deep for me was to carefully body-pull SMALL amounts of mobs and pray the merc healer would keep me up while I was killing them. As I progressed through Vasty Deep, I upgraded gear when I could.

One of my boosted toons, a paladin, was not doing well with the Wretched Francine mob (her reef familiars were killing me). So I got a friend to bring a healer toon and help out, and the rest of the zone went by in a FLASH. If you can get one other toon to go with you, rather than having to rely on the merc, then Vasty Deep Solo becomes super easy. And, as you complete Dr. Arcana's Weekly Solo quests for Vasty Deep, you will get even more ethereal "coin".

So far, I have boosted and used the above process for a warden, channeler, mystic, paladin, ranger, and wizard, and as I mentioned above, only the pally had real problems with it.

Good luck and good hunting!

I'd like to share my own experience with the zone. Before I get into that I wanted to point out that I quit playing 1 month into the Blood of Luclin expacs release and I just came back to game at the start of October 2021 (RoS expac).

So I ended up Buying all the expert spells, and completed the panda quests which hold better starter gear (minus adorns). I used the shadowed 170 resolve Jewlery from BoL Panda and whatever armor
I could use from RoS panda. I Made sure to grab the adorns off the RoS starter gear from box. I also had to make sure to adequately equip my healer merc. Bhooghar, Tarsil, and Captain-Ros can do the job with enough gear slots. (I had 10 slots open)
Doing all this I was "Barely" able to do Toil and Trouble Solo on my SK as the first named seemed to be the Biggest hurdle. After clearing the zone multiple times it got easier as I got more gear. I started putting all the extra gear on my warlock and then my wizard. My warlock without certain gear pieces for ability dc, became a struggle even with a good healer merc but did become doable thanks to the dot lifetap heal.. The wizard on the other hand, even with being geared in about 75% toil solo gear it was still a serious struggle on the wizzy due to lack of any sort of self healing vs the warlock being able to do so.
The key to this zone was having a really good healer merc and then also having Specific slots of gear that carry Ability DC. These slots are : Head, Cloak, Waist, Charm x 2, and Necklace. It's a given that if you can kill the first named, then it is absolutely possible to beat the rest of the zone. The first named was rough for me on my wizzy while on my warlock it was much easier.

I just wanted to post this as what it took for me to actually complete the zone. Some classes have it way easier than others.
My wizard had one heck of a time surviving it and what made it happen was having a healer merc with enough open armor slots and my wizzy having just enough Ability DC in those key slots listed above.

This zone for my wizzy was definitely no cake walk.

So on August 31 I received a warning from Accendro, the new community manager fo commenting on an EQ2's raider ease with the solo Toil and Trouble:

Vasty Deep: The Abandoned Labs solo (Toil and Trouble)
http://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?posts/6662169/

One or several of your recent posts have been determined to be inappropriate and violating the forum guidelines. Further violations may result in additional warnings and restrictions on your forum and in-game account access.

0) Terms of Service violations.

I replied with the emoji "eeek". That was sufficient for a warning and ban . Twice since devs have changed the event and added emotes to help the players involved who could not just blast through the content. And now I can post again without refrain. It's Discord moderation all over again...

Will the real Buffrat...please stand up...please stand up