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    Frostreaver

Guide - From character creation to .... YES!!! another Guide

Wraith6911 said:
The team is 82 now. We worked our way out to try a couple of new zones - first we tried Korascian Warrens. Not a bad zone, not too difficult to get to -mobs hit hard but went down fast enough. I do not care much for the aesthetic of the zone however if I have to be honest. Group invis helps a lot to get there- or a mage COH - or be ready to fight the random KOS rallosians along the path to the zone in. Some where KOS - some were not. Once in the zone, everything was.

So then I moved the team over to Feerott, the Dream and we were, "enlightened". And by enlightened I mean we had our second team wipe (remember our nice adventure at Valdeholm). The mobs hit like trains - and even my newly upgraded paladin was taking hits up to 4k to the chops. My lone cleric was not keeping up safely, and finally we went down. Once the tank dropped the rest of the crew went down like wet noodles.

We had to make the hard decision to change up one of our DPS'ers for a secondary healer. I did test first however - tinkering with various INI for the cleric and even tried a cleric merc to see if I just had a bad set up on my cleric. But both struggled to solo heal safely even with my paladin regularly throwing heals and the full compliment of stuns. So the new crew is Paladin / cleric / chanter / druid / zerker / rogue. Made the tough call to swap out the beast lord because I already had a druid on that account I could immediately plug-n-play. Druid is set pretty aggressive but with a full compliment of heals - so the DPS did dip somewhat, but the combat has been far more stable. The ability to port in addition to the guild hall portal should also help with moving the team around.

So I am pretty sure that someone running with much more geared toons (or more experience setting up the cleric INI perhaps) may be able to run a single dedicated healer for this content - but my recommendation for team comp going forward will be to have one on tap out of the gate. With the additional heals - the crew should be able to more safely tackle some names and get some more upgrades on the team as well.
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DROP drop Drop Drop Drop the Druid for a shaman
 
Wink- said:
If you can get to the point where you can handle Feerott, there is a spot in the very south with undead zombies. Your pally should shine there! As someone who just did the heroic path, I did Feerott->House of Thule->The Grounds->Morell's Castle. I only did Morell's to farm the quiver so I could stop buying dang arrows.
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With the changes to the team that I made I have been able to hold my own in The Dream much better. I have yet to try a named as of yet - but I have been working on the undead frogloks in the corner. Makes the paladin actually look a bit like a DPS class when the procs go in my favor.
 
Allurex said:
DROP drop Drop Drop Drop the Druid for a shaman
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Technically I could sub in a shaman - but I would have to drop the zerker and bring back in the beast lord - then some of my buffs would over lap, but I would have access to the bst mana regen line again. What do you think is the best benefit to the shaman over the druid?
 
I run with shaman as my main healer...so shaman u got a main healer slower dotter and epic clicks for melee.... they have way more heals and hot line that druids can't even come close
 
My group is paladin shaman bsty bard mage chanter... can basically kill any mob in tov under 20secs..
 
For tov, as long as you have enough aas and good gear, you can have any kind of group, mobs won't last long.
 
Well - TOV for me is still a minute away, but I do want to thank everyone for the feedback. I did a lot of testing last night with group comp and tinkering with INI files for my supporting cast. I have to admit that I was completely blown away with how good the shaman was as the main healer. Not only was the group stable - she was able to solo heal. I literally paused all mac's on the cleric and just had him sitting there and the shaman held it down. I pulled down a great INI from V1ndi and was totally blown away with how good she was - she heals better now than when I play her. We even tackled the named spider in The Dream ( Malice) three times. I'm sure a piece of it is my bad cleric INI - but that leaves room to add another DPS back into my squad now if the shaman can hold it down solo. I can also tune my chanter to be more aggressive.

Will be doing more testing this evening - but right now the team is shaping back out to be Paladin - shaman - bst lord - rogue - chanter - mage maybe? ( the account with the cleric has a mage and a wizard - but I am leaning mage atm)

*quick edit - the core of the team picked up 83 while working through various comps - so making the best of even the testing phases*

**Came back in tonight and tested out the new line up - went with the mage to round out the group. Have been working on the undead frogloks in the corner of The Dream - very stable in this set up. Have only had one death all night - stepped back and let the paladin puller mac handle some business and forgot that Expedition Leader Krupp has a massive snare when engaged. Went back after the rez and moved the crew closer and got him down. Have also let the group auto Malice the named spider numerous times - so cloak and belt upgrades for the rogue / bst and a belt for the chanter. The core of the crew will tack on 84 tonight at this rate.**
 
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So I settled on the team - Paladin - Bst - Rogue - Shaman - Chanter - Mage. Finished out 83-84 at the undead frogs and then moved over to the undead gorilla area in the other corner near Rathe zone line. While they are not technically all undead, the paladin still does some pretty insane dmg on most of them to really make it a good spot. Picked up 85 on the core squad last night - mage and shaman are now 86, but I moved them into this team from another team I was running as heroics. Will most likely stay in this area for a little bit longer, I have not seen another soul in the area so I can pull uncontested to my hearts content. I was thinking about moving to the House of Thule courtyard, but there are always people there. So we shall see.

The team has been stable on all trash mobs - once I picked up 85 even more so since the paladin can chain stun just that much better with the 3rd stun able to land. Swapped up the bst INI at 85 to one of the heroic templates and he started rocking the parse again which is nice. Been giving serious thought to picking up MQ2 Rogue / MQ2 Beast - but haven't totally committed yet. This did start as a half sub / half FTP project, but I have been enjoying it so much that I may or may not have subbed the chanter account as well to get him full access to fun stuff and the free AA.

The only time things get a bit iffy is bad pulls ( settling in with 3-4 mobs) and some named mobs. The chanter does his job admirably, but holding down 4 mobs that thump that hard while he is casting can be full pucker mode. But this is just EQ, a bad pull is a bad pull. And I need to be on point with my paladin skills on named mobs - armor of decorum / deflection disc etc. We had one more wipe to Krupp due to his ranged snare - got just close enough shaman tried to heal - so she got agro and the dominos fell after that. But all in all the team is doing great - we breezed through the level and got few masks from Festerback for the squad. May jump out and see how we do in an HA at Gribble - but so far I am still preferring open field.
 
So the team has been cruising along - once I reset all the INI at 85 (mostly used heroic templates) for my support team we really started blistering The Dream. I can reliably stun lock again on paladin which makes for the level of avoidance I had been used to in previous levels. Bst / Rogue/Mage are outputting a higher average parse so the mobs are going down quicker. Sub'd the chanter to get full AA access which has helped a lot, especially on his burn cycles for names. The shammy is still our rising star as she has been able to solo heal the group and keep us stable. It is rare that I feel the need to hit a heal with my paladin. We knocked out 86 at the gorillas in the Dream and I started turning in shards for Rank II spells on the core.

I tried to move into House of Thule courtyard, but it has been busy every time I have tried. A group on each side holding it down firm. So we moved back out into The Dream last night and worked on the hounds near the zone in. I managed to wipe us, but that was my fault - zoned into the HoT and back out and apparently it freaked out my support team. So they followed me - but I picked a fight with Patches by myself apparently and he mangled the team after the paladin went down. Always make sure to check your mac's again after zoning I guess.

I may try to move the team into the mansion in HoT - try out the undead area with the erudite ghosts. The paladin should do well there. And I still need to try a Gribbles again just to see how we do.
 
Also check with Franklin Teek in POK next to Clayton. He gives out the kill 5 mobs in hot zones. So you would get the current bonus exp plus the hot zone bonus exp. You can get a couple around your level. Also the hot zone will continue to give out bonus exp even after the task is done. There are cool augs that drop specific to each hot zone.

You may also want to make your way to Erudin Burning from the House. Lots of undead there and the zone starts at 85.

I like your guide, its nice to hear of others travels!
 
All the credit goes to Mr Patate and the other contributors that got it going. This has been a great resource for getting a new team going, even years later. The macs are still viable and very useful and the add-ons along the way have been awesome. The second group I got going all did the starting quest listed by Smokeybear and were immediately ready to jump into grinding in Moors - I knew that heroic wizard would be great one day. Mostly I am just adding my thoughts about the process that may help some others when they get into the same areas - hoping that the original posters don't mind that I keep adding to the thread.

But I will definitely have to check out Erudin Burning - sounds perfect for the paladin.
 
So the squad was on our way to Erudin Burning - and found that the courtyard in HoT was completely empty. We laid fast claim to the area ( right hand side) and crunched out 87 quite easily while landing more upgrades to equipment for the team. Masks, rings, random weapons, etc. Unfortunately we ended up getting run off the camp by someone who was pulling the entire area for a PL group I guess - why else would a 95sk still be there pulling. So we invis'd up and made the dash over to Erudin Burning. Not going to lie, as my first time there it took me a minute to figure out where to go, but once we figured it out we were in business.

Great advice on this location as the paladin is on full destroy mode for most pulls with all the undead. A bit interesting to get the crew towards the back due to the narrow path and the barriers - but once we are back there we go to town. The names are quite a bit tougher, but so far we have been able to take them down - so even more upgrades for the team. Paladin now has thulian gloves and bracers and an upgraded mace from a quite nasty little rat near the zone in. I did bite the bullet and sub'd to MQ2Rogue and MQ2Bst for my primary DPS team. Having already picked up MQ2Cleric for my other group I can whole-heartedly recommend these plugins. They work great right out of the box and are easily adjusted via the interface for minor changes. So give CWTN / Sic's work a check if you haven't already, well worth it if you play as much as I do. They already have me drooling for the shaman and enchanter plug-ins that are coming. The team is fast approaching 88 in this area and should easily pick it up in a play session this weekend. Hoping to knockout the next level or two here and head over to check out The Grounds as well as I hear good things.

**Update - the team all broke into lvl 88 as planned in Erudin Burning over the weekend play sessions - we have tackled most of the names towards the back of the zone and landed quite a few updates - rings, some weapons, cloaks, etc. Was a bit disappointed after 2 fast thulian armor drops the first night that we have not seen any more, but I guess I got lucky that first day. I have been pulling to the stair down just out of the tunnel that leads to the area - good spot, but there are 2 spawns to be aware of right here and one roamer. Still seems safer than most other areas in the vicinity. Sometimes a mob will bug out coming up the stairs and basically fall into the world - if you run back down the stairs quick enough sometimes they warp back. But it does not happen to me often.**
 
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So the team is closing in on 90 (it will be mine this weekend) - have spent a lot of time this week testing out the new CWTN / Sic plug-ins for my shaman and chanter. But I think that it is time to slow down and focus more on some gear upgrades for the squad. The paladin I feel is okay for his level - he tanks up trash mobs just fine, he does spike on names - but I just feel like that is par for the course at these levels. With full buffs ( including the wild growth line ) he tops 51k hp and breaks 1600ac at lvl 89. I have also managed a decent set of drops for my bst - just luck in that department. But some of the other team members are really lacking. I was hoping that I would get more drops as I went in the higher tier zones - but after 2 pcs of thulian on the first night in Erudin Burning it totally dried up. I have gotten some jewelry or random items from the names ( a lot of rogue cloaks have rotted) but no more armor drops.

So I think I am going to step back and grind out some world drops in t1 HoT zones and get more terror infused on my squad. Maybe I do need to start running the Gribbles to fill in some of the blank spots - I just prefer open field- and with no porter in the team I have to swap toons around to quickly move to the DeadHills area. It pretty much has to be something I can farm or work on my own - I am a trade skill slacker and its cost prohibitive to buy the mats for the HoT t1 crafted stuff.

This leads me to the question that I will pose to the other folks that constantly level toons like I do - when do you break for gearing?

My experience in the past two run throughs is that defiant works up to the late 70s - but then you need to seriously look at your tank in order to move into the HoT zones. If he can manage then typically he can cover for the rest of the group while you get some more drops. Maybe I went too fast through this level range and needed to spend more time gearing in this range. What tactics do you guys use here?
 
So we picked up 90 over the weekend on the core team. Went over to The Grounds and started moving around from named area to named area trying to hunt for drops. Managed a few for the squad - updated several neck items - some range items - new shield on paladin. One more pc of thulian armor which immediately went to paladin since it was the chest. Still trying to bring up the rest of the team gear wise, but everyone is over 30k now with buffs on at least.

I looked ahead into the VoA expac and its looking like more of the same in terms of the armor set - trade skill crafted pc + drop + combine box. So that will still give me issues in stepping up to the next tier. I still really want to avoid farming Gribbles if at all possible, and I am not keen on grinding out tradeskills.

But that still leaves me with my question from my last update - when do you guys break for serious gearing of your teams? And how do you go about it? I cant be the only trade skill slacker left in EQ.... can I
 
You can go into TBM. The missions scale down and the gear from the remnants of tranquility is non-prestige. It's an interesting expansion too. The HA's are not that long. The gear is all lvl 75 with like 4 aug slots. You just keep upgrading the type 9 slot as you progress. You only have to do very little progression to start getting HA's. The nice part is, you can always target what you need and everyone earns currency! That way you don't end up with 19 rotting cloaks!
 
thanks for the post guys, both Mr Patate and jfrazi, you give a lot of nice inputs.
I started a team from scratch when i realised that farming plat with my heroic team was not optimal because of mercenaries costs. Plus leveling a full group is a lot of fun!

It is however super slow... I finally levelled them to 63 to be in range of my main team, which is right now chain pulling greens (reds to the lower levels) in the lopping plains for 1% ish exp a pop. That's extremelly safe and not unpleasant and part of the exp goes to the lowbies fellowship, which even in its nerfed form works good enough for my purpose if i rotate toons in and out of the group.

But it's still a far cry from real power levelling... i'm guessing i just don't have the correct classes. I would need some kind of swarming/Aeing, which is why theres a SK, a bard and a wizard in my group... Also i realised later that i don't have a reliable DS'er that's why i have rolled a mage along some other toons, but i'll have to PL them with vendor bought DS potions...

Long story short : i suck at Mboxing and planing :D

Do you guys have any tip to bestow an exp bonus to free accounts?
 
I honestly cannot speak much on what anyone would consider power leveling. I just build entire groups and go most times. I will link toons together once I get them in range with each other if I need to shore up a weak spot in a group, but generally I just open field mass murder unsuspecting mobs. But I am also a perma-leveling kind of player - I run 3 different groups on my primary 6 accounts (only one at a time obviously), but I also recently discovered that I can run more than one group at a time on my rig (I had another post about that discussion) and made 6 new accounts to create a farming group based on community feedback for group make-up and now I have that team leveling away in their own time.

My primary team - pally / shm /clr / enc / rog / bst is currently exp'ing and named farming in Fear Itself for upgrades and are all 90-92. ( the paladin is on monitor 1)
Second team - war / shm / bard / zerk/ zerk / rogue are still littles and are merrily exp'ing in lowbie areas out of everyone's way ( the war is on monitor 2)

Monitor three is where I look things up or have a movie going while I am grinding away. I generally run the tank on my big account myself but always keep tabs on the mini tank in case I need to react to something.

All of my groups have the trinity - tank / main heals / CC. Then I dial in the group based on what I think I want them to do long term and we go hunting. The only "secret ingredient" that I use is time. There are phases when I have first linked some groups where a bigger DPS has dragged the group through a few levels, but I am never in a rush. So I probably didn't help much answer your question - for me its just time. I have already put 20 years into EQ across the various platforms, what's a few more 🤓
 
Just some random tips I though of:

You mentioned that you don't like tradeskills as a reason for not going after the HOT, VOA or Shards Landing Armor. You can buy the templates in the baz so you would need 0 tradeskill. You can also buy the templates off the NPC in those zones but its way expensive. I know on my server there is usually a nice selection of the player made templates for about 2k or just ask in chat. I used to spend a lot of time whipping up those templates for folks. The only thing I didn't like about those was the cost of the box needed to do the combine.

As for free accounts - they earn experience just like paid accounts. Don't forget your Lesson of the Devoted each day. And those Teek kill 5 dailys.

I don't see much mention of augs. In your 70's Oceangreen Hills has some nice armor but even better aug - Bayles Heraldic Crest - which is good for a few levels. Also your Heroic characters all get special augs in Feerrott - make sure you get those. And Ldon points have some fill- in augs and you can fly threw those dungeons - can be good experience there too.

I have heard that Zeka is a good place to farm. I tried it but I think I had the wrong one, might have been doing Beza or whatever. Its confusing. But they say just run thru it and sell off everything. Have lots of open bags.
 
So a fast update to the team's progress - the core unit is 92 now ( pally, shm, rog, bst, enc) and I have been working on catching up the cleric ( currently 90). Since I swapped him out some for the mage to pump up DPS he fell behind a bit. But we have been using this time to farm names in Fear Itself when I am driving the tank / or farming xp and some named in Grounds when I am focusing on the little group. Have pulled down quite a few updates to non-visibles as well as some weapons / shields. The paladin is almost head to toe thulian now, believe I am only missing the arms as I picked up greaves last night.

In terms of leveling areas - Grounds has slowed, but it is still good for when I am focusing on my group of littles. We can easily handle the mobs, even on slightly bad pulls, and the names are a non-issue for this team. Which is actually why I decided to go with cleric right now full time - I spend a lot of time hunting names for upgrades. Adds a layer of security. I also have mq2rogue and mq2bst on my dps and it does better on them than I do :shh: Fear Itself is still good for experience and named farming, but I feel like it needs more attention as everything here can summon. So if you aren't paying attentions its easy for something to happen where a healer gets pulled out and sniped or tank gets stuck in a summon chain and splats out by himself. This is where mq2rogue pays serious dividends. The auto corpse grab by itself is worth the investment honestly.

I have also dipped into some VoA zones - valley I believe it was? Struggling with the name off-hand. Was good xp, slightly annoying to get to though. As soon as the cleric tacks on 90 I will try Into the Hills again to see how we do.

The team has slowed forward momentum somewhat, but I have added a second group and have been dialing them in and getting used to a totally FTP team. Though I may break down and give them some $ and gear to get them moving. They are following the same path that this group used - just staying in areas longer before moving on. I think this will be beneficial once I get into the higher zones for the tank to be slightly higher than expected. I may chrono the tank at some point just to help the team, but probably not until the 80s to maximize the free AA's.
 
My higher lvl team is lvl 93, as far as i can tell Into the Hills is the best exp/hour you can get, if you are at the helm of course. I'd be happy to know how you fare against the named mosquitoe, because it still beats the living crap out of my group more often than not (mercenary tank).

I really, really disliked VoA. It sucked so much it made me fear that all subsequent expack were as shitty and i was ready to give up EQ right here. I went back to farming gribbles hoping for the best.
 
mayjkb said:
My higher lvl team is lvl 93, as far as i can tell Into the Hills is the best exp/hour you can get, if you are at the helm of course. I'd be happy to know how you fare against the named mosquitoe, because it still beats the living crap out of my group more often than not (mercenary tank).

I really, really disliked VoA. It sucked so much it made me fear that all subsequent expack were as shitty and i was ready to give up EQ right here. I went back to farming gribbles hoping for the best.
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I will do a test this coming weekend on the crew and let you know how I do. What I can say from personal experience thus far though is that the tank mercs fall of very hard at about 85. I was actually able to more safely tank using a mage pet with a cleric merc than I was trying to heal the merc tank in my original group. I'm sure that mileage varies per person - but I have gone exclusively to real tanks for my groups as a result.
 
I'd recommend this guide to get to 100. Worked well for me recently.


If getting there is too much of a pita, then you can do the Speckles camp site (mob #23 on map) for easy exp. Just use lev so you don't get stuck in the candy land area.

I also did Veil of Alaris Valley of Lunanyn (north valley first and south valley 95+) See Lowres09's post here: https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/valley-hotzone-south.32138/
 
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Update time - the team is all lvl 95 ( almost 96 now actually). I did Into the Hills - we did okay. PH instead of boss - so can't say how we would have done against a named in there. I still prefer field killing on this crew though.

Took the team and headed back to Valley of Lunanyn. Ground down 93 and some change in the first area. If trees were open we did those - the named was a pain at first, but once we got a level or so he went down easy enough. At 94 I moved onto the second part of the zone. I actually went way south to make sure I was out of everyone's way and pulled spiders - rats - and some roaming lancers. Ended up in a good spot and would occasionally get some name spawns. I moved slightly north to catch one of the grendalyn(sp?) spawns as well and sometimes got that named to pop as well. We picked up 95 and safely padded it and then I headed to Shard's Landing. I had gotten all the upgrades I could use from the names in that area and was just holding a few extra to turn in for tribs. ( even though I havent started using it yet we have about 500k banked)

Have not compared the exp gain between the two as I was feeling the area out. But we were able to take the named wolf. No fear touched this time - but my rogue got a nice dagger update. My plan now is to stay in this area and do some named sniping for upgrades for the team. Since the fear touched does not require trades and only the boxes - I can farm that cash as I go and hopefully farm up patterns and really update my support crew. I did a bazaar update on the paladin to keep him current - so at 95 with buffs he is breaking 80k HP, cannot remember his effective AC off hand. But he seemed like he was going well against the wolves.

My two baby teams are following the same path that this team did - just staying in each area longer due to all being FTP. But they are moving along nicely. Once you have a pattern down they move a lot faster - team 2 is closing on 70 and team 3 is knocking on the door to 60. Spoiler alert however - gnomes get stuck a lot in velks lab... that little raised path at the door is just high enough to stop the lil guys if you are letting that team auto to the zone in. So I moved them over to the room on the left.
 
Well you're progressing far faster than I am :D

Any advice on FTP gear at lvl 85? fear touched will be a godsend at 92, but right now my SK is nearing lvl 85 with around 11k hp unbuffed :D I originally started this team to have a solid tank, this one would get one rounded (if that!) by level appropriate content.
 
mayjkb said:
Well you're progressing far faster than I am :D

Any advice on FTP gear at lvl 85? fear touched will be a godsend at 92, but right now my SK is nearing lvl 85 with around 11k hp unbuffed :D I originally started this team to have a solid tank, this one would get one rounded (if that!) by level appropriate content.
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my go to for f2p is

FTP / Silver Accounts (Non-Prestige) Augs, Items, Clickes - Everquest Shadowknight Forums

FTP / Silver Accounts (Non-Prestige) Augs, Items, Clickes The Armory
eqshadowknight.net


Or you could be in Feerrot killing named and getting drops to make the armor from the npc in there. The first two tiers are non prestige. I would buy the templates thru the bazaar though - much cheaper. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:House_of_Thule_Armor_Guide
You can go up levels by going further into the grounds and killing named and getting higher drops that you combine from your first drops combine.


In VoA, T1 and T2 gear a non-prestige. For the visible armor, the names are "rustic" and "formal," respectively - level 85 min - again you can buy the parts in the baz - search for rustic
everquest.allakhazam.com

eq:Veil of Alaris Armor Guide

Wiki article for eq:Veil of Alaris Armor Guide :: Wiki
everquest.allakhazam.com everquest.allakhazam.com
 
I just took the chelsith route with my team starting at 95, never run out of mobs on the beach and only really have to worry about pulling more than one if you pull the shissar fishing team on the beach. Between 103-105 on them now doing TDS.
 
So the main team is now 97 - yes we are moving a little slower now. But the upgrades from Shard's Landing have been plentiful. Between the fear touched and the random drops I have upgraded a lot of the team - everyone except the rogue is closing in on 70k with buffs. Pally is up around 90 with combat buffs rolling. The rogue lags behind slightly as my shaman gets first pick of chain drops. This is probably the most rounded my team has been since they started out. I still always upgrade my tank first - but the plate drops at least for me have been plentiful. Between a few cheapie bazaar buys and the drops he is almost head to toe in T1 gear for the content. I did do another Into the Hills - we won, quite easily, no named again this time to update. But I still prefer open field any day.

As far as FTP gear going into HoT expansion - I stayed away from that expansions crafted because it was so costly on my server to get the templates and I am a trade skill slacker. I spent some capital on my tank and main heals to get some terror infused and started farming names in The Dream. I'm more of a slow and steady guy with my farming as it keeps my team safer. So I farmed up until the team rolled the named in the area. Then moved to HoT courtyard and did the same (when I could get the camp-its still pretty contested).When we finally left most of the team had several pcs of terror infused armor, and lots of non-visible / weapons. From there I rotated between Grounds and Erudin Burning ( amazing if your tank is a paladin) depending on which was open. I got hosed on the thulian drops in these two zones - but some pcs did happen that went right to the tank. I would stay away from Fear Itself as a FTP team however as a lot of the drops are prestige and no-drop.

My two smaller teams are fast approaching 70 and are farming BoT or CoD depending on what is open. I keep them in areas longer than I did my paid team due to lack of the AA and I did not bank roll them much. Gives them more time to farm for drops and get spell capital. But they level so fast in this range that I don't bother with most spells - only the most important ones. Been working on some P99 this past week as well so I have only been running 2 teams at once instead of three. But all of my new monitors are set up now. So each team including P99 can have their own screen going forward. My 6 screen set up is almost complete!
 
Nice update. As a FTP player of 1 team it’s good to see what others are doing. My team is all 69 and I’m just using the Hero’s Journey lime from The Serpents Spine to guide me. Dorina’s 4th gift quest has become the bottleneck as it requires a 181 trivial tailoring combine to complete it. 6 toons doing tradeskills at the same time has proven to be a heroic journey all on its own lol! Good luck and keep the updates coming!
 
Man you sure run a tight ship.
It's becoming super hard for me. My team is lvl 86 and I had to stop dead in my track and gear my SK to continue playing. It was a difficult endeavour in itself but i finally managed to flag my tank for TBM gear, and spent almost all my cash gearing him.

Now it's done i'm running a group in The grounds. I like this zone, thanks to a remote safe spot that i found on a guide on this site. But i'm grinding at a very slow 0.2% ish a kill for my full group. I added my 93 rogue to the group for dps, i think what he eats in exp i gain back in kill per minute...

It sounds about right for a grind to 90, in a scenario where 90 is the max level. Problem is it's max level grind all the way to lvl 115... like they never adjusted the exp rate to account for a decade of content being released...

I do gribbles from time to time, it's fun too but its not a whole lot faster, all things considered.
 
mayjkb said:
Man you sure run a tight ship.
It's becoming super hard for me. My team is lvl 86 and I had to stop dead in my track and gear my SK to continue playing. It was a difficult endeavour in itself but i finally managed to flag my tank for TBM gear, and spent almost all my cash gearing him.

Now it's done i'm running a group in The grounds. I like this zone, thanks to a remote safe spot that i found on a guide on this site. But i'm grinding at a very slow 0.2% ish a kill for my full group. I added my 93 rogue to the group for dps, i think what he eats in exp i gain back in kill per minute...

It sounds about right for a grind to 90, in a scenario where 90 is the max level. Problem is it's max level grind all the way to lvl 115... like they never adjusted the exp rate to account for a decade of content being released...

I do gribbles from time to time, it's fun too but its not a whole lot faster, all things considered.
Click to expand...

Are you running your "Lesson of the Devoted" AA once a day when you are ready to start grinding xp? I think it's been auto-granted to everyone now (not sure HOPEFULLY to FTP accts too) ..

Do a /bcga //alt act 481 to get it to fire on all your toons right before you start killing stuff.. 100% XP bonus for 30min, i think its a 20hr cooldown.. but make sure if you have anyone casting or bards singing, that they stop first then do the command, as I've had it bug before where it doesnt give me my LOTD buff, and STILL in cooldown!
 
LorDeth said:
Are you running your "Lesson of the Devoted" AA once a day when you are ready to start grinding xp? I think it's been auto-granted to everyone now (not sure HOPEFULLY to FTP accts too) ..

Do a /bcga //alt act 481 to get it to fire on all your toons right before you start killing stuff.. 100% XP bonus for 30min, i think its a 20hr cooldown.. but make sure if you have anyone casting or bards singing, that they stop first then do the command, as I've had it bug before where it doesnt give me my LOTD buff, and STILL in cooldown!
Click to expand...

Good tip with the Bard song! I have had that happen a couple times unfortunately!
 
So the main team is breaking into the 101 space. I can't speak highly enough about Shard's Landing if you need a spot to balance out the gear for your team. It is all trade-able, non-prestige, lots of fear touched, and lots of just T1 group drops. I have moved around between the different areas surrounding the zone in from GH portal. I suggest starting with the cats in the south east as they have some relatively weak if you are catching up gear. Once you have that solid you can move around pretty easily. Mostly where ever other groups are not is where I have been. I have had little to no issue with other people coming around, minus the occasional named hunter that gets their named and buggers off. I am sure that this isnt the fastest place, but I have been left alone, I have stock piled loots in the guild bank, made about 500k plat (just selling trash), and everyone has all of their spells 95-100. Also of note - a lot of mobs here are not KOS, so you can set up quite easily in several areas. And if you do wipe out - the GH portal back is literally right there.

Team 2 (all FTP) is merrily farming away in Dragonscale Hills. They just tacked on 73 last night. I take the farm when I can get it, but it can be contested. And if I am running other things I steer away from it to not draw un-needed attention to myself. My favorite spot for these lower levels of this range is the beetles by the large skeleton. Need some CC in the team for the break since you will be getting 2-3 early. But once its broken up a bit it is a cake walk. There is one named that spawns here, mostly a waste as his aug is prestige, but he hasn't been in my way much. Once the team settles in they handle the area nicely. Now that I picked up a few more levels I set them farther out away from the wall and turn up my pull radius to keep the critters coming after I take out all the beetles. If you can get the farm - there are more named chances, but if you are not paying attention I would not as I have yet to be there without someone coming up to ask to join, ask to loot something for quests, or in some cases I swear just to check and see if I am AFK. So be warned. All my loots are focused on the warrior / shaman first as per my normal. Not a ton in this range and defiant still holds its own a bit longer.

Team 3 (also FTP) just picked up 65 farming bees at the top of Bastion of Thunder. The loot isn't amazing, but it keeps spell money coming in. The area is mostly abandoned minus people going into the farm the tower bosses on occasion, and they don't even fight things if you have the area clear already. I set up right at the teleport room and pull everything to there. As the team has picked up more levels I can pull more of the area before having to wait on the cleric or SK mana. A lot of times in this range I would do CoD zone in, but I wanted a bit of a change up this go round. I will most likely be attempting to move this team over to Plane of Fire C1 soon if I can find it open one evening. The loots are about the same, but the xp rolls hard and fast if you can land a city camp.

Also - the post above about burning your Lesson is pure truth. I burn it on each team once they are set up and rolling in an area first thing when I know there is a super high concentration of mobs. This game does not give you many freebies, so take the ones that you can get. And yes - even FTP accounts get this daily!

Happy holidays all!
 
Might be an odd question for you all who seem to know how all this works really well but I have only used built ini's on a higher toon. How do you "make" an ini for a lower level?
 
Pamv88 said:
Might be an odd question for you all who seem to know how all this works really well but I have only used built ini's on a higher toon. How do you "make" an ini for a lower level?
Click to expand...
When you start a macro like Kiss or Mule, it creates an ini
 
Quick update on the crews! The main team is starting to pick up 104. 2 dinged up last night and the rest should tonight or tomorrow. I have been hunting in The Deluge. Super easy to get to, super close to spell vendors, and so far I have rarely seen other people outside of the zone in area. So I have been rather uncontested sitting in one of the corners pulling away. The loot is not as easy to acquire as it was in Shard's, but I have managed castaway gloves for the whole team and I am keeping ahead of the spell spend which is a win. The one point of note in hunting here, some of the mobs are enchanters and will mez your tank. My crew has the bst pet and the enchanter charming things - so one of them typically picks up agro. I also have the cleric and the shaman so the cross heals keeps us standing during a long mez on the paladin. But be warned, it can create issues for some group make ups. The rest of the mobs here are easily handled.

The second team is 75-76 and have moved to hunting in Icefall Glacier. I started off with the little goblin camp and then slowly worked my way over to the kobolds. Good camps, chances for RKII's which are just pure cash for a FTP team. I suggest moving into the kobolds slowly. I have wiped the team out moving into the caves too fast and getting overwhelmed with adds, either bad pulls or respawns before the team has had time to rest back up. But the xp is moving along. This is the area where at least to me, the xp starts to slog along for a little bit. My plan is to slow grind to 80 and the invest somewhat heavily into the tank with the hopes of moving into the Dream in a weaker spot to gear out the team. I have a chrono on stand-by for the tank in this team to give him a leg up AA wise. May pop it pre-80 if the xp starts to roll in pretty smoothly. We shall see.

Team three is seeing slightly less time right now. They are 65-66 and still farming away in BoT. But I have been rolling my two main EQ teams and then a few SWG toons in the evenings, so the third EQ team has not been getting as much love. Sacrilege I know - but I still dig both games and some of my buddies have been around in SWG to run missions with in the evenings.
 
Realized it has been a minute since I updated on the team. Have had some recent issues - PC and macro related to which I posted a horror story about. But the team was doing pretty good. Everyone picked up 105 pretty easily in the deluge. I could have probably pushed to take more names, but I generally stayed in a corner away from everyone else. The enchanters were slightly annoying, but the Bst pet picked things up pretty quick, and with 2 heals in the core team we never wiped. The 104-105 stretch took a while as things started to turn light blue, but it gave me time to just rake in some cash. Left this area with a bit over 500k plat on the pally, team has all the spells/skills from the vendor, and I probably have 20 pairs of castaway gloves to try and sell.

So from here I went into Empires of Kunark. And that may have been a bad idea LOL. There is definitely a steep increase in difficulty here. I went from almost face rolling mobs to getting an add may mean a full team wipe.

Tried the giants first. First few pulls went well. They hit hard and have a ton of HP. But one at a time we held our own and did well. Then I got an add. Chanter = splat. All cool downs on the pally are down. Cleric splat. One giant down, one left. Shaman is almost OOM. Pally splat . Game over. Full team wipe #1.

Came back and went to the drachnid area. Much better success over all. Can survive some adds on the pull with the chanter. Handled a double. Then a triple. Even pulled off a horrid 6 mob pull without any losses. Started feeling a bit confident. Turned on auto pull while I set up my second team. First pull on its own. Pally gets rooted and splats on the pull. Cleric healed through a cave wall. Stampeding hoard of drachs are in camp. Chanter is sitting in a ring of mezz'd bug people all alone. Can I bring everyone back up in time. Nope. One resist on next round of mezzes. Chanter splat. Full team wipe # 2

Drachs take two! No auto pull this time. All manual - let's do this! Clear all the bugs outside the little cave area. Take my time and work through the groups. Everyone is on point and I am sure to rest a bit between pulls for cooldowns and mana. Head into the cave. Rooted on the first attempt. See outcome above. Full team wipe # 3.

Have actually had to use some lull line spells to make pulls safer and more manageable. Tough area to break into, but I like the challenge. May also move to the other side of the area and try the chickens as I doubt they will root me in place while trying to pull them. But we shall see. I am in no super hurry to keep pushing content as I am in expansions I never did before now. For someone that has been playing this long off and on it's amazing I have never focused one group long enough to get past 100. Will probably cut out some time on this team to work on some epics and some fun clickies.

My other teams have lagged behind a hair. But I have a master rifleman/master creature handler in SWG now. So progress somewhere. Time to try a bounty hunter!
 
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