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Guide - How to PL like a pro - guide to using fellowship vitality (1 Viewer)

Stilin

Well-known member
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Feb 17, 2021
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I was always a decent low level power leveling using the DS method but stunk when I got to higher levels. I maxed out my characters by sheer will and determination. Automation surely helped with that, but the timing component was significant enough that I took risks that got me in trouble when I wasn’t at my keyboard. My analogy to automated boxing was like passing in a car on a two lane road; with a fast car you may drive very quickly to get around your obstacle, but for a short period of time. To do the same thing in a slow car leaves you vulnerable to a head on collision or cop radar for a much longer period of time.

Fellowship vitality is that fast car. Using it was confusing and it’s unnecessarily buggy which made the learning curve even more complicated. Once I got the hang of it, I was leveling toons just out of curiosity of the class and then transitioned to spinning up my own raiding crew. I have over 60 level 120 toons with max AA to give you an idea of the scope of what you can do once you get the method down. Maxing out a crew should be trivial. How quickly? It takes me about a day and a half to get from 85 to 120.

Fellowship xp is rewarded with vitality which you cash in at 5x the normal XP rate or 3x if you are doing AAXP. Both of these are huge rewards. They are capped at a max of 10% per kill for normal XP and 5AA per kill if for AAXP. You can store a vast amount of regular XP vitality (up to your max level?) but only up to 100% of AAXP vitality. Both forms of vitality are burnt at the same time so you could have a years worth of regular vitality saved up and if you switch your XP to AAXP you will burn it up in an hour or so of grinding. You can check how much vitality you have with the following commands you can make an EQ Social hotkey with: ${Me.Vitality} ${Me.PctVitality} ${Me.AAVitality} ${Me.PctAAVitality}

How do you get vitality? There are a few rules;
1) You must be in the level range to be able to group and share XP. At the level 120 cap, you must be level 90 to share xp or vitality. This will change with the Laurion’s Song expansion to level 95 minimum. You must have fellowship xp sharing turned on.
2) You cannot be in the same group to receive vitality. You can be in the same zone, but I have had it bugged before that I had to zone (or logout) for it to start working. Since this time is valuable, I usually always grind in two different zones. I also recommend this to be more anonymous. (different areas to grind, different guilds, etc)
3) To push vitality you must have fellowship XP sharing on and be showing up as capped. To get to capped you must have max regular XP (you do not need to be max AAXP) and you need to have fellowship XP pushed to you for one tick. For the fastest vitality push you need a full group that is super high dps and all capped.
4) You also cannot receive vitality if you are showing up as capped. (You can only push) If the PLee is at max regular XP and capped you must die to get under max regular xp to be able to receive vitality for grinding AAs.

Vitality is awarded every 20 minutes. It takes it from everyone that has fellowship xp sharing turned on and distributes it back to people that are not in the same group that have fellowship xp sharing turned on. Every kill in the non-capped group with sharing turned on, will get a chunk of this vitality pool. What I normally do is turn sharing off on everyone but the one character I’m trying to level up so they get 100% of the vitality gains. During XP bonus weekends I’ll bump it up to PL two at a time. Anymore than that you burn through the vitality much faster than you can receive it.

You can use this vitality in many ways; solo, one group, two groups or three groups. If you only play six accounts you can have the PLee logged out and still push vitality, log him in every hour or so and burn through it, then repeat.. If you do this you want to turn xp sharing off while he is in your main group so you are getting max vitality awards and not sharing back to anyone else. I’ve done this and it was faster but I questioned the effort versus the reward because the PLee is not actively XPing while receiving vitality.

My favorite way, by far, is two full groups. The push group (all capped/sharing on) and the PL group (all sharing off but PLee). The faster the PL group can kill mobs the better. You should be on regular xp vitality about half of the time getting 5x experience. Lesson burns cap regular xp at 10% of a level and cap AAs at 5 aaxp per kill. When you are at max level and you switch to AAXP you should be getting vitality kills 100% of the time at 3x aaxp. (so 5 aaxp per kill) So the faster you can kill mobs, the faster you acquire AAs.

In theory, you can use 11 toons to push vitality to the 1 PLee, but I haven’t felt the need to do this and it would require 3 full groups which adds to the complexity.

You do not need to be a sub’d account to generate or receive vitality. You could potentially spin up your groups just for this purpose, but raid gear makes it significantly faster. If you go the f2p route, casters generally out dps melee.

I have tried many combinations of toons to try and find the perfect group and my favorite setup is pal, nec, mag, bst, brd, shm. In the PLee group I hope the toon is one of those classes, if not i drop the bst. This group keeps mana up easily, has a plethora of pet dps and has 3 rezzers which is fantastic to keep it going.

Hopefully this post will help you utilize one of the best tools that EQ has given us.
 
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So I have six capped and six not capped. Have you found it is more effective to turn off sharing on all but one of the non capped ones to be more effecient? I am finding that all six non capped sharing exp is just not rolling very well.
 
Thank you for this clear explanation. I was under the impression when my toons were 99.99 at max level and “capped” they didn’t help earn vitality for the PLee so I constantly had them eat a unrezzed death when they reached that point lol.

Thought that didn’t make sense!!
 
I love how you need a god damn PhD to understand how vitality works - it's absolutely mind blowing how that UI/system ever made it live. Literally this was probably the dev that created it.

Always Sunny Reaction GIF
 
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So I have six capped and six not capped. Have you found it is more effective to turn off sharing on all but one of the non capped ones to be more effecient? I am finding that all six non capped sharing exp is just not rolling very well.
Yes, it gets diluted out too much to not be worthwhile. In theory, they would all level at the same rate, but it would take a long time. You are usually better off to grind up one key person to max, then the 2nd, 3rd, etc in my experience.

I love you need a god damn PhD to understand how vitality works - it's absolutely mind blowing how that UI/system ever made it live. Literally this was probably the dev that created it.

Always Sunny Reaction GIF
Agree, it's unnecessarily complicated. Love Charlie Day.
 
Has anyone gotten crazy with this using mercs to get 4 groups going in GD/Sathirs and stuff to see if it made a big difference?

I've done the 6 capped/ 6 PLing method, worked nice. I had my primary group grinding, a few side characters to help with CC and healing. the 6 PLees alternated who got into a PL spot. Got 6 characters 100-115 with max AA in 2 weeks doing this.

I've wanted to try a 3 group method so to speak. 2 groups 11/12 in fellowship pushing exp to a PLee in a 3rd group whose grinding as well and see how well that works.
 
Yes, it gets diluted out too much to not be worthwhile. In theory, they would all level at the same rate, but it would take a long time. You are usually better off to grind up one key person to max, then the 2nd, 3rd, etc in my experience.


Agree, it's unnecessarily complicated. Love Charlie Day.
Appreciate that Stilin. Bard to 120 so he can keep the rest alive in GD grind!
 
Thank you for this clear explanation. I was under the impression when my toons were 99.99 at max level and “capped” they didn’t help earn vitality for the PLee so I constantly had them eat a unrezzed death when they reached that point lol.

Thought that didn’t make sense!!
It did used to be that way, long time ago, I used to just make essence emeralds... but it changed a while ago
 
Would recommend UP > ST > FP > ME > GD if your tank can handle it.
I currently have my feeder group doing The Spirit Fades or Mean Streets for feeding. I will give PLee group of 115 a shot in FP or ME and see how they fair there before going back to GMM.
 
Small observations from tests today:

If you have 9 capped feeding 3, the individual xp to vitality seems less than when 9 capped feed 2 (and 1 not sharing). BUT the total is a bit higher if 3 are fed.

IND | GRP
3 = 100% | 115%
2 = 133% | 100%

If you pop Lession on the feeders, this is *increasing* the feeded XP by 100%, so dont hold back.
 
I am finding the key is finding a good spot for the feeders to grind at. I am doing spirit fades and/or mean streets but feel like it would be smoother/faster somewhere that did not have the downtime of cycling the instance. However the privacy of the instance makes it hard to beat since my server usually has some people in ST, UP, ME and the like. But six feeders feeding two 117 leeches seem to be doing very well right now.
 
Thank you, this is a great guide. I have never really messed with vitality because I didn't really understand how it worked, this helps alot.
 
I am finding the key is finding a good spot for the feeders to grind at. I am doing spirit fades and/or mean streets but feel like it would be smoother/faster somewhere that did not have the downtime of cycling the instance. However the privacy of the instance makes it hard to beat since my server usually has some people in ST, UP, ME and the like. But six feeders feeding two 117 leeches seem to be doing very well right now.
I gave up on instance grinding a year+ ago. I felt that the xp was nerfed (or maybe the ToL level cap increase just made RA terrible) that I started grinding in UP primarily with one group and another in ST, FP or ME. I can see if you are on a high pop server the instance may be more attractive, even at a slower xp rate.

For a long time we would spin up a pick zone, can't recall right off of how many toons you need for it to spawn a new zone, I think it's 30. So if I saw a zone that already had 18 people in it I could load 2 or 3 groups and a pick would spawn up within 5 mins or so. The pick would last for a long time as long as there was 1 toon in the main zone which was great for a long weekend of grinding out XP. The last few times i've done this the pick would merge back into the main zone based on a different formula where one toon wasn't enough to keep it going.

It's good to make friends with the other boxers/PLers on your server so you can communicate in Discord if there is GM activity. I also use MQ2Discord so i'm alerted of tells and have a MQ2Event to respond to camp checks. I don't know if you are better off to reply to camp checks or not, they usually get someone to send you a tell and then if you don't respond via discord from the same character could put you in more risk of getting reported than just ignoring the CC to begin with.
 
spot for the feeders to grind at
I use to use Shei instance because it respawns, so would just go in first hallway and set my tanks angle to 110 and range 1000 so that it covers the first 2 halls and start it can run 6 hrs straight killing around 180 mobs an hr.

Also the last toon I raised I fed 11 to 1 and what I did was shared with a friend, so he had his 1 toon in my FS I had my new toon in his FS and then we both ran in Shei the same way. It was an extremely fast plvl we were on a double exp weekend and went from 100 to 120 and max aa over it.
 
I gave up on instance grinding a year+ ago. I felt that the xp was nerfed (or maybe the ToL level cap increase just made RA terrible) that I started grinding in UP primarily with one group and another in ST, FP or ME. I can see if you are on a high pop server the instance may be more attractive, even at a slower xp rate.

For a long time we would spin up a pick zone, can't recall right off of how many toons you need for it to spawn a new zone, I think it's 30. So if I saw a zone that already had 18 people in it I could load 2 or 3 groups and a pick would spawn up within 5 mins or so. The pick would last for a long time as long as there was 1 toon in the main zone which was great for a long weekend of grinding out XP. The last few times i've done this the pick would merge back into the main zone based on a different formula where one toon wasn't enough to keep it going.

It's good to make friends with the other boxers/PLers on your server so you can communicate in Discord if there is GM activity. I also use MQ2Discord so i'm alerted of tells and have a MQ2Event to respond to camp checks. I don't know if you are better off to reply to camp checks or not, they usually get someone to send you a tell and then if you don't respond via discord from the same character could put you in more risk of getting reported than just ignoring the CC to begin with.
On my server it is a bit too busy to hang in those zones during most of the time but hey that is part of the game.
I am using the area @Trapper suggested and while I am only killed 80 per hour to his 180, it's still fairly consistent. Thanks Trapper!
 
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I made a social to see if I could check my vitality. I'm doing something wrong because it has me /say ${Me.Vitality} instead of it being a command.
 
I'll try /echo. I didn't type /say before the command. I was communicating that it had me say the command instead of executing it.
 
That is because your default chat for the window you typed in is set to say. You need to do an /echo before for it to be processed and display the value in the mq window
 
nerf to vitality incoming /duck haha good write up dude !

>Side note: vitality is granted every 15min<
 
Can anyone verify that this works?

/echo ${Me.Vitality} ${Me.PctVitality} ${Me.AAVitality} ${Me.PctAAVitality}

Its showing all zeros even for those who are capped.

UPDATE: It works. Issue was checking on max XP and capped characters.
 
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I did get things working but there were a few curve balls.

TL;DR

Steady state XP rate for my test was: 0.368 of a level an hour.
With 10x characters pushing XP for 2x PL'ee resulted in 0.591 of a level an hour ( 60% improvement )

The vitality pool emptied very quickly. I was only able to get ~ 8 of each 24 kills boosted.

If I could maintain 100% vitality on all kills rate would be 0.851 of a level an hour ( 231% improvement )

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Setup:
- Three groups: 18x characters - 2 of which are PLee rogues at level 111
- Setup in darklight caverns

Test #1 : Results: 174 kills per hour @ 0.00212% or 0.368 levels / hr
- 1x group with 2x PLee rogues + 4x highest DPS characters
- 3x tank groups with continues stream of mobs coming into camp.
- all other DPS characters solo or paired up.

Test #2 : Results: 87 kills per hour @ 0.00683% or 0.591 levels / hr
- 1x group with 2x PLee rogues + mix of 4x DPS
- 1x group with tank + healer + 4x DPS
- couple extra tank/healers outside groups helping

~ 24 kills every 15 min of which 8x received fellowship vitality boost
- Normal XP: 0.00212%
- Vitality XP: 0.00945%

Test #3 : Vitality only ~ 0.00945% per kill or 0.851 levels / hr
 
I'm not really sure how to do all this but I had my 100 necro get full vitality then I had him grind a few mission with my 115 f2p guys and he got to halfway in to 107 and the vitality was about to run out. Wasn't paying attention to the time but it was less than 2 hours , that's pretty fast for me.
 
Of if I understand correctly I can use 5 level 120 max exp guys and turn sharing on for them and have one toon with sharing off getting mad exp ? They can all be grouped together using mq2grind ?
 
Of if I understand correctly I can use 5 level 120 max exp guys and turn sharing on for them and have one toon with sharing off getting mad exp ? They can all be grouped together using mq2grind ?
No, you need to build up out of group fellowship XP first, so either have 6x120 grind and then log in your other toon and have sharing off on the toon (dont forget to turn it on if you log for the day). For constant feeding you need 2 groups, with one group being capped (i.e. the feeders) and sharing on for all.
 
I tried to use fellowship xps a couple times, but as someone pointed out, you need a degree from MIT to understand it.
Got the general concept from your post (thank you for that) and had a couple questions.

1. If I was working on a 6 toon interchangable team, I would have the 6 currently maxxed out with sharing on, and log in the toon to benefit from the xps every now and again. You said every hour or so... is that the cap you can store for future use?

2. my toons are not maxxed AA's yet. Do I need to turn on regular xps to store vitality for my toon that will benefit?

Thanks
Kat
 
I tried to use fellowship xps a couple times, but as someone pointed out, you need a degree from MIT to understand it.
Got the general concept from your post (thank you for that) and had a couple questions.

1. If I was working on a 6 toon interchangable team, I would have the 6 currently maxxed out with sharing on, and log in the toon to benefit from the xps every now and again. You said every hour or so... is that the cap you can store for future use?

2. my toons are not maxxed AA's yet. Do I need to turn on regular xps to store vitality for my toon that will benefit?

Thanks
Kat

Well, fellowship XP is like...interconnected buckets of water :) It's very important if you are running 2 groups to have the "feeder" group capped, of they will take XP from the smaller toon.

For the "simple" way, you just set the 6x120 to "sharing" (and also the 7th toon) and nevermind if they are capped or not, happily grind away. A few hours, should work out (if going for regular XP) - an hour probably if going for AA XP on the 7th toon.

Then log in the 7th toon, replace in group and set sharing to "OFF" on that 7th toon. Observe the "fill rate" on regular and AA vitality, this gives you an indication if you need to log the toon in sooner or later. XP away, until vitality is depleted, reset sharing to "ON" and camp the toon, back to the 6x120, rinse and repeat.

Pro Tip:
Regular XP vitality bucket is huge, can go up to 10 levels (up to your current max XP - so if you are 120 99%, it will be rather small).
AA vitality xp bucket is good for your current max AA stored, so...if you have 200 saved - it will be small, if you have 10 saved, it will be bigger. Spend AAs before camping your 7th toon!
 
Well, fellowship XP is like...interconnected buckets of water :) It's very important if you are running 2 groups to have the "feeder" group capped, of they will take XP from the smaller toon.

For the "simple" way, you just set the 6x120 to "sharing" (and also the 7th toon) and nevermind if they are capped or not, happily grind away. A few hours, should work out (if going for regular XP) - an hour probably if going for AA XP on the 7th toon.

Then log in the 7th toon, replace in group and set sharing to "OFF" on that 7th toon. Observe the "fill rate" on regular and AA vitality, this gives you an indication if you need to log the toon in sooner or later. XP away, until vitality is depleted, reset sharing to "ON" and camp the toon, back to the 6x120, rinse and repeat.

Pro Tip:
Regular XP vitality bucket is huge, can go up to 10 levels (up to your current max XP - so if you are 120 99%, it will be rather small).
AA vitality xp bucket is good for your current max AA stored, so...if you have 200 saved - it will be small, if you have 10 saved, it will be bigger. Spend AAs before camping your 7th toon!
I followed you right up till the end. Pro Tip left me confused. To use an example, I have 6 toons that are all level 120. A few are max level (ie 99.99). If I turn on xp share, it will 'push' the xps to the 7th toon (currently a 109 toon). So can I store up to 10 levels of xps for the 7th toon, or is it much smaller because the feeder group is mostly capped out?

Thanks
Kat
 
I followed you right up till the end. Pro Tip left me confused. To use an example, I have 6 toons that are all level 120. A few are max level (ie 99.99). If I turn on xp share, it will 'push' the xps to the 7th toon (currently a 109 toon). So can I store up to 10 levels of xps for the 7th toon, or is it much smaller because the feeder group is mostly capped out?

Thanks
Kat

Vitality bucket size is always per-toon. Like I said, if you run a high level group, it does not matter so much if your toons are capped - if shared, the (shareable) XP will flow to the other toons in your fellowship which are not in the group and can receive XP.

I did not measure this, so this *might* be wrong (not sure if capped guys stream more XP, but I think not):

Pusher Group (all sharing on):

T1 120.99 XP full AA (will receive no XP)
T2 120.99 XP not full AA - set to 100% AA (will receive reduced rate for AA)
T3 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 100% XP (will receive reduced rate for XP)
T4 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T5 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T6 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)

T7 110 XP

XP Group for T7:
T1 120.99 XP full AA (will receive no XP)
T2 120.99 XP not full AA - set to 100% AA (will receive reduced rate for AA)
T3 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 100% XP (will receive reduced rate for XP)
T4 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T5 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T7 110.01 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA SHARING OFF (ding ding ding)

T6 will receive shared XP from T1-T5, to be burned on next pusher group run. Would not set sharing off then.

rinse and repeat
 
Vitality bucket size is always per-toon. Like I said, if you run a high level group, it does not matter so much if your toons are capped - if shared, the (shareable) XP will flow to the other toons in your fellowship which are not in the group and can receive XP.

I did not measure this, so this *might* be wrong (not sure if capped guys stream more XP, but I think not):

Pusher Group (all sharing on):

T1 120.99 XP full AA (will receive no XP)
T2 120.99 XP not full AA - set to 100% AA (will receive reduced rate for AA)
T3 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 100% XP (will receive reduced rate for XP)
T4 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T5 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T6 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)

T7 110 XP

XP Group for T7:
T1 120.99 XP full AA (will receive no XP)
T2 120.99 XP not full AA - set to 100% AA (will receive reduced rate for AA)
T3 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 100% XP (will receive reduced rate for XP)
T4 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T5 120.15 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA (will receive reduced rate for XP & AA)
T7 110.01 XP not full AA - set to 50% AA SHARING OFF (ding ding ding)

T6 will receive shared XP from T1-T5, to be burned on next pusher group run. Would not set sharing off then.

rinse and repeat
Thanks., last question. does it matter what the toon is set to in the pusher group? ie., do I need to set reg xp (even tho they are capped already) to push regular xps to the 7th toon?
 
Thanks., last question. does it matter what the toon is set to in the pusher group? ie., do I need to set reg xp (even tho they are capped already) to push regular xps to the 7th toon?
This is what I mean, I don't know if more xp goes the fellowship direction if you set the XP to 0% AA, or if that XP just poofs. My assumption would be the latter. If you can still gain XP in AA or level, I would set that.
 
This is what I mean, I don't know if more xp goes the fellowship direction if you set the XP to 0% AA, or if that XP just poofs. My assumption would be the latter. If you can still gain XP in AA or level, I would set that.
yea, I would have to agree. I dont like the sound of *poof* when it comes to hard earned xps ;) ;)
 
Yeah been playing with this and I have 6 characters that are max exp and I have put AA exp at 0% and then 100% and no matter what I do, the 6 characters at 99.99% never say capped in the fellowship consistently. I had 2 of the 6 say capped then when I logged back in the next day it switched to shared. The 7th char is getting vitality but not sure which is the best way to feed it to him.
 
Yeah been playing with this and I have 6 characters that are max exp and I have put AA exp at 0% and then 100% and no matter what I do, the 6 characters at 99.99% never say capped in the fellowship consistently. I had 2 of the 6 say capped then when I logged back in the next day it switched to shared. The 7th char is getting vitality but not sure which is the best way to feed it to him.

Can anyone explain how to get them to "capped" 2 hours at 99.999 and it wont move into the "capped" state. do you have to have a different toon to attempt to provide those toons vitality for it to registered as capped? any thoughts? Am I doing something wrong? I have 6 toons at 99.999 regular exp. I am only level 115 but I do not have expansions so this is my "max" level. I Kill for 2 hours like this yellow and white con mobs and I can never seem to get "capped" I did after an hour of not getting exp moved to AA exp.
 
Can anyone explain how to get them to "capped" 2 hours at 99.999 and it wont move into the "capped" state. do you have to have a different toon to attempt to provide those toons vitality for it to registered as capped? any thoughts? Am I doing something wrong? I have 6 toons at 99.999 regular exp. I am only level 115 but I do not have expansions so this is my "max" level. I Kill for 2 hours like this yellow and white con mobs and I can never seem to get "capped" I did after an hour of not getting exp moved to AA exp.
you have to have 1 toon, out of group or out of zone feed at least 1 kill of experience to those at cap level but saying "shared" the update can take up to 15 mins, and it will tick them over to "capped". it's like the check doesn't happen until vitality is tried to be added to the toon at 99.999 exp.
 
you have to have 1 toon, out of group or out of zone feed at least 1 kill of experience to those at cap level but saying "shared" the update can take up to 15 mins, and it will tick them over to "capped". it's like the check doesn't happen until vitality is tried to be added to the toon at 99.999 exp.
Thank you
 
Guide - How to PL like a pro - guide to using fellowship vitality

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