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Question - Returning after 16 years (1 Viewer)

Deafknight

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Nov 5, 2019
RedCents
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Hey guys. I played eq from 2000 to 2004ish on bristlebane and torvo. Ive multiboxed back in the day by alt tabbing and have used isboxer with wow.
Heres my question/s Im looking to get a pc wether its new or a refurb and build myself (on the cheap) what would you reccomend?
Also i currently have two accounts 14 year plus vet rewards war and sk... Im thinking of rolling a shammy for 3 group at first.. Thoughts? Thank you for reading will check back later.
 
EQ is still a very low requirements game. If you're going to run full spell/graphics/character effects, then a decent graphics card will help. If you're cool with old models or even stickfigures, minimal effects and clip planes then you can use really low performance systems.

The paid plugin MQ2EQWire ($10/year) will massively reduce your graphics load by only rendering the front screen at any time. I had a clunker office desktop, like 2012 vintage, that went from running only 2 toons to being able to run a full 6-box with that plugin as the only upgrade. No graphics card, using the on-board graphics from the motherboard/CPU.

Generally you'll need 1 GB of memory per toon, plus whatever your system needs for background. 8 GB should be a min and 16 GB would be plenty for a group.
 
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So if i start 4 new accounts would i need to pay 13 a month for each account initially?? How does that work?!
Thank you for your replies so far. Thinking of buying an sff 8300 elite and buying sone upgrades (16gb ram, ssd, nvidia 1050 ti lowprofile) hopefully ill be able to box like a champ and run Mq no problem.
 
That's exactly how I started. Three boxing with a tank, so I decided to add a shaman because he offers the most efficient setup for a 3box as the healer.

As I continued using VV/MQ2 I realized that running a full group was where I was headed. I think most people come to this conclusion.

I will say that with a full group (cleric as MH) I would rather have a BST instead of a SHM. I have an ENC for slows, so the BST would give me a lot of SHM buffs + a ton more DPS.

Also, if you don't have CC (Bard/ENC) in your 3box, the SHM ae root aa is VERY useful.


I have been running 3 toons on a mac w/16gb ram, then 3 toons on a macbook air w/16gb ram. I'm sure I could run the whole group on the mac if I played with the graphics/settings a little bit.
 
Accounts are free-to-play by default now. So you can make as many as you like. If you make a bunch in one day, or don't log them in to play right away, Daybreak will start asking you to verify via providing a phone number for the accounts. I have 18+ accounts that I play all the time, but I only pay for the 3 tanks for each group of 6.

FTP does have some restrictions. New earned AA are capped at 250 (or 1000 if its an older "silver" account which yours would be)though any AA you've already purchased will remain available and a lot of the top tier items are prestige-flagged so only gold/subscribed toons can use them. I think you're limited to 4 toons per account though you can buy more free slots. It also restricts you to the weaker mercs, which hurts at higher levels.

A common method for 6box is to subscribe just your tank and run the other 5 FTP. Then the tank gets to use the full variety of available armor and AC augs. Non-prestige augs are pretty restrictive though doable, so it does make gearing your tank at higher levels much easier. As you level, you can use "AA auto-grant" to get a bunch of the appropriate AA automatically. I believe this is still capped at everything minus the last 4 expansions. A good trick to is PL your guys as high as you can, then subscribe/krono for one month, turn on auto-grant then relog, then earn and buy as many AA as you can while your subscription is active. If you do this at max level you can usually earn almost all the missing AA in one month. Then do it again every new expansion.

You can subscribe the old fashioned way, also now called "gold", or you can buy/trade for an in-game item called a Krono. The Krono is available to all characters on your account, any server and any Daybreak game (I think.) It gives you 30 days of subscribed playtime if you consume it. They trade in game for 2,000,000+ plat (2.3M on my low pop server) on Live servers and much less on the reboot/vintage style servers that are locked into older expansions. RedGuides also occasionally has Krono available in the RedCents store so you can earn them by making useful posts for the community.

Expansions are still sold once a year, usually in December, with beta/early-access going up for sale in Oct/Nov. The new Velious expansion is in beta now.

Previous expansions are available for free up to Empire of Kunark (the 2017 expansion) so you can level to 105 on a FTP no-expansion account. They typically keep it so expansions from two years back are opened as free, but there has been some variance in when and if they do that each year. When you purchase an expansion you get access to all previous expansions. The beta access purchase may not give you access to all expansions until the beta-access converts to real expansion in Dec.

There's also the option to purchase a Heroic toon upgrade. It auto-levels you to 85, a full set of raid-tier gear, gives you some plat, a mount and almost all the AA you could get at 85. Very useful if you want to jump a tank class up to 85 and use them to powerlevel the rest of your group up to that level.
 
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Accounts are free-to-play by default now. So you can make as many as you like. If you make a bunch in one day, or don't log them in to play right away, Daybreak will start asking you to verify via providing a phone number for the accounts. I have 18+ accounts that I play all the time, but I only pay for the 3 tanks for each group of 6.

FTP does have some restrictions. New earned AA are capped at 250 (or 1000 if its an older "silver" account which yours would be)though any AA you've already purchased will remain available and a lot of the top tier items are prestige-flagged so only gold/subscribed toons can use them. I think you're limited to 4 toons per account though you can buy more free slots. It also restricts you to the weaker mercs, which hurts at higher levels.

A common method for 6box is to subscribe just your tank and run the other 5 FTP. Then the tank gets to use the full variety of available armor and AC augs. Non-prestige augs are pretty restrictive though doable, so it does make gearing your tank at higher levels much easier. As you level, you can use "AA auto-grant" to get a bunch of the appropriate AA automatically. I believe this is still capped at everything minus the last 4 expansions. A good trick to is PL your guys as high as you can, then subscribe/krono for one month, turn on auto-grant then relog, then earn and buy as many AA as you can while your subscription is active. If you do this at max level you can usually earn almost all the missing AA in one month. Then do it again every new expansion.

You can subscribe the old fashioned way, also now called "gold", or you can buy/trade for an in-game item called a Krono. The Krono is available to all characters on your account, any server and any Daybreak game (I think.) It gives you 30 days of subscribed playtime if you consume it. They trade in game for 2,000,000+ plat (2.3M on my low pop server) on Live servers and much less on the reboot/vintage style servers that are locked into older expansions. RedGuides also occasionally has Krono available in the RedCents store so you can earn them by making useful posts for the community.

Expansions are still sold once a year, usually in December, with beta/early-access going up for sale in Oct/Nov. The new Velious expansion is in beta now.

Previous expansions are available for free up to Empire of Kunark (the 2017 expansion) so you can level to 105 on a FTP no-expansion account. They typically keep it so expansions from two years back are opened as free, but there has been some variance in when and if they do that each year. When you purchase an expansion you get access to all previous expansions. The beta access purchase may not give you access to all expansions until the beta-access converts to real expansion in Dec.

There's also the option to purchase a Heroic toon upgrade. It auto-levels you to 85, a full set of raid-tier gear, gives you some plat, a mount and almost all the AA you could get at 85. Very useful if you want to jump a tank class up to 85 and use them to powerlevel the rest of your group up to that level.


I believe heroic character armor is the same level as HoT tier 1 group, so far from raid quality there.
 
So some advice

Re: PC
Anything with 8gb will run 6 toons, ideally you want 16gb.
For super cheap many people buy used small-form-factor corporate pc's on ebay/facebook.
My desktop is a used one from craigslist from 2011, a i7-2600 cpu. I upgraded the ram to 24gb, added an SSD and can run 18 toons comfortably even before mq2eqwire

If you dont want to buy something used....
Black friday is coming up, I would buy whatever is cheap be it AMD or Intel desktop or laptop that I can add an SSD and increase the memory to 16gb
https://blackfriday.com/categories/desktops

Re: Playstyle
As others said plan on 6, life is great with 6. If you dont start with 6 you will want to get 6 later
You may be better off to start with 1 or 2 then go back and build your other toons so you have a chance to learn the classes

Depending on how you WANT to play will decide what subscriptions or expansions you need

To me EQ1 = entertainment and I can get YEARS of playtime worth of entertainment for next to no money, I know hardly anything about end-game content and mainly play eq1 as a single player RPG that has a chat room. Sometimes people help me sometimes I help them but most of the time I am playing a single player RPG and using the chat room.

It's is all about the playstyle you are interested in

Opt 1 - TLP
Requires subscription for every account
Only a few servers work for MQ2 usage (anything not true-box)
Some macros/plugins have caveats on TLP because TLP is not using the full feature set of live. Most macros/plugins focus on Live

TLP's are good IMO because it slowly allows you to get the new content before it is obsolete and there is a community around the game knowledge at that time period.
TLP's tend to have more players within your level range

TLP Nostalgia game
Gives you old school experience and is easier to re-learn the world
For nostalgia there are many servers in old expansions

TLP new game
Sadly Miragul is True-Box so we cant use MQ2 there, would have been great IMO but some of the TLP's are in newer expansions, however t

Opt 2 - Live
All live servers are very top-end heavy, not just max level but most are in farm mode high-level
However many play Live because there many years of actual playtime content, so you are not going to run out of stuff to do for basically free.

Subscriptions
When you subscribe you get 2 major things
1. Ability to gain AA via Auto-Grant (instant, the qty is dependent on level)
2. Ability to gain stats from prestige gear
3. Ability to sell in bazaar/barter stuff (you can still buy with f2p)

When your subscription ends you keep all the AA you gained but you dont gain stats from prestige gear
Most people have 1 subscription and a bunch of free-to-play accounts
Some people have 6 subscriptions

The common strategy is to level your toon past 60ish then subscribe for a while and max their AA then let the subscription end
The reason most have 1 subscription is because a tank gains OOODLES of power from wearing prestige gear

Server Choice - Live
FV has the fastest XP, it also allows trading the most items. It is marked as the RP server but today this just means you have to skillup your language skills.
Brekt also has ability to trade the most items and supposedly faster XP than normal servers
Zek has PvP
Others are all basically the same, some have historic communities

My recommendation for live is FV unless you have a personal reason for other servers.

Server Choice - Test Server
Test server gives you Gold subscription and I think faster EXP
A couple people play there full time and even raid. So it is a good option

Expansions
Some will have additional info or oppinion
Personally I dont bother with buying expansions until I catch up on all the old content.
 
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I play full time on test as a 6-box with an i5, 16gb of ram, and an R9 290. I turn off Luclin models for the full nostalgia and it reduces my memory load. It runs just fine and no hiccups. Test has its own challenges and do mention some briefly in my guide. I'm happy to explain more if you're interested but I also take a more slow and steady approach than some on the forums so have a bit different perspective. If I were to do a full raid I would probably bump up to 32GB of ram for a bit of headroom but the 2C4T processor is working fine (though OC'd to 4.3Ghz via air cooling). My home built PC was pretty cheap, maybe 800 with the Gfx card (been 2-3 years).
 
Thank you for all of your replys . I wasnt sure the type of response I'd get if any to be honest. Im going to take all of your advice and get involved with the six man setup. As soon as i get my computer ill be back. Im planning on getting mq and kissassist. Running my group from level 1's all the way to the end game. Ive got some pretty cool idea's and will definitely be giving credit to red guides for helping me along the way.
I appreciate each and every one of you that took the time out to respond, I truly value and appreciate your input. Its nice to see such a friendly and helpful community still involved in (in my opinion) the best mmorpg of all time. Thank you again. I will be updating you guys soon with my setup and hopefully be up and running before thanksgiving.
Have a Great day guys. Much respect.
 
Thank you for all of your replys . I wasnt sure the type of response I'd get if any to be honest. Im going to take all of your advice and get involved with the six man setup. As soon as i get my computer ill be back. Im planning on getting mq and kissassist. Running my group from level 1's all the way to the end game. Ive got some pretty cool idea's and will definitely be giving credit to red guides for helping me along the way.
I appreciate each and every one of you that took the time out to respond, I truly value and appreciate your input. Its nice to see such a friendly and helpful community still involved in (in my opinion) the best mmorpg of all time. Thank you again. I will be updating you guys soon with my setup and hopefully be up and running before thanksgiving.
Have a Great day guys. Much respect.
I returned a little over a month ago and have been blown away by this community as well. Great bunch of people.
 
Ok guys .. I was able to get a nice Pc off craigslist for 200 bucks! Had to go to jamaica queens(50 cents home town) to pick it up..... But man was it worth the drive!
Dell optiplex 3020 : i5 4570 , 16gb ram , gtx 960 4gb, 120gb ssd, 1tb hd , win 10, mouse+keyboard and all wires plus hdmi... It runs like brand new... I am now ready to multibox! Ive got EQ inatalled and have checked out my accounts tested things out and am ready to start creating and leveling my group.
Red guides brothers.. Can you help me by guiding me to what programs to download and how i can setup my computer to run my group?
Im going to just start fresh and make 6 level ones i think?? I have a 73 sk on one account .. And a 51 war on another account though.. So should i keep those two? Scrap the war? Scrap the sk? Can sk Power level my squad?
I waaas thinking War,bers,wiz,cler,ench,bst...
Lmk what you guys think. Really need some help ... (I really love bard but if ench is the better choice id Rather go ench) ty in advance appreciate you guys.
 
Ok guys .. I was able to get a nice Pc off craigslist for 200 bucks! Had to go to jamaica queens(50 cents home town) to pick it up..... But man was it worth the drive!
Dell optiplex 3020 : i5 4570 , 16gb ram , gtx 960 4gb, 120gb ssd, 1tb hd , win 10, mouse+keyboard and all wires plus hdmi... It runs like brand new... I am now ready to multibox! Ive got EQ inatalled and have checked out my accounts tested things out and am ready to start creating and leveling my group.
Red guides brothers.. Can you help me by guiding me to what programs to download and how i can setup my computer to run my group?
Im going to just start fresh and make 6 level ones i think?? I have a 73 sk on one account .. And a 51 war on another account though.. So should i keep those two? Scrap the war? Scrap the sk? Can sk Power level my squad?
I waaas thinking War,bers,wiz,cler,ench,bst...
Lmk what you guys think. Really need some help ... (I really love bard but if ench is the better choice id Rather go ench) ty in advance appreciate you guys.
congrats!

you definitely want to start with the RedGuide's Starter Videos redbot put together

as far as the group goes, I'll give you the same advice i always give

Enjoy your group is most important thing - after that have a real tank and build around that

real tank (war, sk, pal), real healer (clr or shm), real CC (ench or bard) -- then i build my dps around that --- if i use ench i go with caster style group, if a bard i do a melee group --- there is a lot of flex with group makeup assuming you have your bases covered (holy trinity). There are just some "synergy" buffs that will benefit casters over melee and melee over casters etc
 
Glad you were able to get your computer. I don't personally use any software other than MQ2. So I cannot comment on if there are other tools that give you functionality that you wouldn't be able to otherwise acquire using mq2. I think all you should need is MQ2 and use some of the plugins that come with it, such as MQ2EQBC to allow you to communicate with other group members on the same computer without tabbing over. Use a macro like KA, ICHz etc to run your group.

KA is INI heavy and will require that you manually input a lot of information for the character as you level

I of course recommend MQ2BerZerker for the Berserker, not because I wrote it and it costs $20, but because I truely believe that it'll be useful to you. Check out the video on the overview, the link can be found in my sig.
But there are other options so it's not at all the only choice.

As far the warrior and Sk. I think you only really need one or the other. Not both. But you can use both. I think replacing one of them with another class would be better however, no preference on which.
 
What is the best setup of addons while using mq2 though? I want to use knly mq2 but i want to be able to run my group like a real group was playing each toon. As easily as possible. Thank you for your advice so far. Thinking. Sk,cler,bard,ber,ber,bst.. Thoughts??
 
What is the best setup of addons while using mq2 though? I want to use knly mq2 but i want to be able to run my group like a real group was playing each toon. As easily as possible. Thank you for your advice so far. Thinking. Sk,cler,bard,ber,ber,bst.. Thoughts??
that's a great group - i run similar setups in 2 of my groups.

kissassist is a very nice macro and you could do all of your toons using it - I personally use a combination of CWTN class plugins (MQ2berzerker) and kissassist, but there are a ton of options around here like IHCMercs, and Core

The thing with MQ2/VV is it is *ALOT* of information to digest in one go, my personal recommendation would be just take it one piece at a time.

Get eqbc, mq2nav, autologin, and kiss working, like the redguide videos, and then build out from there.

The Basic video in my sig goes over some of the functionality, and might be interesting to you.
 
I like the group makeup, I think you'll have everything pretty well covered . Definitely drop the 2nd tank IMO.

Most people either go SK or WAR, and I'd recommend WAR, but that's my main.

Make sure and study the KA settings reference page. It is invaluable
 
alright so it took me awhile but I got my party made.. war,cler,ber,ber,bst,bard . I setup mq2 but still have to set up everything else tomorrow. Thank you for all your help guys. ill update tomorrow after everythings all set and im able to run my group and get the show on the road. night for now.
 
I run sk, brd, clr, ber, ber, ber and personally like it a lot better than when I swap out the sk for my war. SK have so much more utility and I have not seen any real difference in tanking with the same gear and aa on both except my sk seems to handle a lot more situations like when mobs silence your healer. Plus whenever my cleric gets aggro and dies because I wasn't paying attention or I had a big pull my sk almost always lives where my war almost always dies. Tough to beat life taps. Plus sk epic 2.0 rocks while I find the war epic kind of useless. I ran a shm instead on one of the ber for a while which made content easier but considerably slower. 3 ber is some crazy dps. Also, an sk is awesome to PL with so if you decide at some point you want to be able to swap out a toon for an enc or whatever you can fast track the levels and make the toon useful in a couple days of playing. For instance I can make a toon from scratch and end up lvl 80 the first day without trying too hard. Then I do 5 or 10 levels a day after that. There are people that can do 105 in a day but they use fellowships and other tricks. I just use a few beers and some snacks. PL with sk gets really good at 110 with some aa and a honed wurmslayer. Snare is still useful in a lot of content which is another reason I prefer sk over war. Don't get me wrong, war can tank some crazy stuff as well, especially low aa vs low aa situations but when healer dies you all die unless the content is weaker than you. Plus sk can summon corpses, can FD pull, can sacrifice pet pull, and so many things war can't do. Just some thoughts for ya.
 
@Saffron those instances where your war dies, is it because you let kiss play him? because my war handles better than any sk ever invented since i play him. as far as pulling I dont want to single pull, I want to pull it all and hold the agro which a war does abundantly well. if i need to add a cc i can but i never do
 
Doesn't matter kiss or not my war can't tank like my sk in many situations, like no healer, silence, and other situations that seem to be getting popular, tbl for instance. Plus no utility. Straight up melee fights, yeah war rock but I rarely seem to get that much so I went back to my sk.
 
Update i actually ended up going for war,cler,bst,bard,ber,rog just to have a little variety. Been having alot of fun . just want to be able to get all of the plugins working on each of my toons easier.
I wish i had gotten into this earlier it really is the best way to play eq. It is the most fun ive had playing any mmo. You guys have really outdone yourselves. I plan on making all my toons members once i hit the caps. Cant wait to play through the game without rushing and feeling like i gotta keep up with my friends. Thank you all again for all your help. It means alot to me.
 
not sure what fighting you cant live thru if you pop disks effectively but I guess to each his own. all I know is a similarly geared sk gets pounded while my war takes it in stride. and I don't need utility in the game that's what the dps does or pullers or chanters. a war hits, curses, kicks, scratches, and holds agro a sk wiggles his fingers and dances around. I rather my tank do the former
 
I got a question i hope u guys can answer for me. Is it true that raid items thst are no drop on live servers are tradeable and sellable on firona vie server? And also im on an oldrr live server running my group and i would like to have a dark elf illusion item on my toons... Is there any viable easy to obtain dark elf illusion thats all/all or potion thst i can obtain fairly easily?? Thanks guys.ill check back later at work atm.
 
Just wanted to give a quick update.
Sooo.. I al running two groups.. One group of 115-110's..sk.sham.ench.wiz.wiz.mage. And my newbs all lvl 73 now(war,cler,bard,ber,rog,bst) Loving Mq2. Loving the community. Redguides has helped me get to where i always wanted t9 be.. Currently have run my crew through time,anguish,and am working on don and mpg trials now for the stat bonuses. Ty to the staff and all who have helped me along the way. Thank you so much! Wishing you all a happy holiday. Much respect. Dk
 
Honestly I would not delete the other tank class you wont be using normally, as they are in a better level range to help PL any utility toons you may feel you want to level. With the exp as it is, depending what content you are using you new group can be high level before you know it, and with the 1.5 x low level toon or 30 level maximum level spread they will be in a better position to help level them up into the group range of the top toons.
 
That's exactly how I started. Three boxing with a tank, so I decided to add a shaman because he offers the most efficient setup for a 3box as the healer.

As I continued using VV/MQ2 I realized that running a full group was where I was headed. I think most people come to this conclusion.

I will say that with a full group (cleric as MH) I would rather have a BST instead of a SHM. I have an ENC for slows, so the BST would give me a lot of SHM buffs + a ton more DPS.

Also, if you don't have CC (Bard/ENC) in your 3box, the SHM ae root aa is VERY useful.


I have been running 3 toons on a mac w/16gb ram, then 3 toons on a macbook air w/16gb ram. I'm sure I could run the whole group on the mac if I played with the graphics/settings a little bit.


Are you running under a VM, bootcamp, or what? I'm new to macs but I just bought a 2012 mac pro I'm going to be upgrading.
 
Are you running under a VM, bootcamp, or what? I'm new to macs but I just bought a 2012 mac pro I'm going to be upgrading.



Im using bootcamp right now, as you can get a free copy of windows 10 from Microsoft. I had tried using a virtualization company (VMware I think?), then I tried using wine (can’t remember the company).
I found that to get everything running smoothly, bootcamp with a full version of windows was the best bet. At least for me, it was difficult getting VV up and running with the other options.
 
Question - Returning after 16 years

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