Stilin
Well-known member
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2021
- RedCents
- 1,328¢
I returned after a 12 year break. Back then I was a raider and max AA but returned as a noob with so much to learn. So much has changed. In a post covid world, I spent a lot of time sitting in front of a keyboard while at home and started playing again to have something to do during my lunch breaks, etc. I spent my first two months leveling up my monk and shaman from 95 to 100 and then 106 and did more gribbles than I cared to admit. My primary form of progress was from daily heroics and gribbles. This wasn’t bad XP but things definitely became harder and more gear dependent as I neared 110.
About a month and a half ago I started noticing people multi boxing; even full groups. I’ve always been pretty good at playing two at the same time or even three to a limited extent where a 3rd merc can help fill out a group to keep chugging forward, but to box six accounts at once? How is that possible?! I craved automation. WFH was the perfect time to try out multiboxing. That landed me at Redguides and what a vast resource it is! It was definitely a bit overwhelming at first on what direction to go so the initial videos by Redbot were very helpful as well as Sic’s CWTN and Mission videos. I thought it may be helpful to write a guide for people that want automation and want to get back to end-game quickly.
It starts with group makeup. You can’t skip this if you want things to be fast. You need the trifecta (tank/cc/healer) and then dps. The best group you can come up with is SK/Bard/Shaman and then Ber/Ber/Bst. I’ve tried other combos, but this is the consensus that it’s the best DPS you can get and with high DPS everything else is easier and takes less TIME. You want to level up your buddies Druid? Make this group first and get them to max AA/group gear and that chore will be a helluva lot faster. I know because I didn’t do this at first until I started watching DPS and kph and comparing it to what other people were doing.
I wasn’t afraid to spend money so I went the quick route by buying Heroic characters and plat for gear This let me group my new army with my 95 monk and shaman and immediately let me do Gribbles. If everyone starts out at 85 you're going to have to grind a bit until you are closer to 95. Gribbles got me an easy source of level 100 gear by using named drops and Marks of Valor. Latent Ether is the first cheap/good armor upgrade that gives your dps and survivability a big boost.
You need CWTN plugins. Kissassist is great, but CWTN is easy mode. I played around with Kissassist with my new army when they were level 1 to get used to moving them around, camping, chasing, etc and changing the ini files. CWTN doesn’t have ini files to manage. Sic’s hotkeys guide, https://www.redguides.com/community/resources/sics-hotkeys.1150/ is also extremely helpful. If CWTN makes it, buy it, you’ll thank me later. It’s one of those deals where you are HAPPY to give them your money. I read in another post someone said they couldn’t wait for release notes and they were spot on. Sic, CWTN and Hytiek make this game easier. I know there are others, but these are the three I feel I benefited the most from.
Once you have your group on plugins Gribbles is silly easy. You can go to FM and grind to 106 or even 110 easily. I liked the wolf area, there are no namers so there isn’t competition. 106 is the next big level as it opens up conflagrant gear. Conflagrant gear is great for returning players and lets you field a viable team that can push closer to 115. I used a lot of it at 115 because I leveled faster than I could source gear. The next push is 110 when it opens up snowbound armor. Snowbound is silly cheap and helps tremendously with the push to 115. At 115 you can get Waxing Crescent Armor from ToL. It's nearly equivalent to the CoV Velium Threaded/Ore armor but much easier to get.
When grinding to 115, you have some options. You can buy ToV TAs which get you about halfway there, but I did the MQ2Grind route. You can also buy ToL TAs which give similar XP to ToV. What a great macro. Hytiek is super helpful and taught me a lot about the game. I admire his drive for efficiency and he is a lot smarter than I am. One of the reasons I felt obligated to write up a guide was to save people from having to ask the creator’s questions. I did break down and purchased TAs to get my tank to 115 so I could get to the next gear level faster. I did a lot of MQ2Grind Darkness Howls.. probably too much, but I did stop and try to do ToV progression but wasn’t able to until my bard could mez and I had better gear and AAs. At this point ToV namers were too hard and by the time my bard could mez I could do harder content in CoV.
The next big upgrade was 115 and Velium Threaded which you craft from Crystalized Restless Ore’s. I bought ore rots for my tank and DPS’ weapons. All my DPS used a VT Great Mace which is very high damage and has great crits which help more later. I’m sure it depends on the server but I paid 250k/ore. (Since Waxing Crescent Armor is out, you don't need CoV ores as bad. You still want 4 for Augs and maybe a few for weps and non-visibles until you hit 120 (or go Baz route for ToL droppable) You need to find someone that can 6 box the missions and make a deal with them if you are in a hurry My short term goal was to be able to use MQ2Grind in Restless Assault while the Anniversary XP bonus was going on. VT gear just on my tank, got me to the point that I could tank things and get gear on my own and only took a few days. At this point I had 700k DPS sustained and burned at 1.4m. I could now do Zlandicar. Wow, now I could farm my own ores. (not nearly as fast) I could also kill CoV named in CS and WW. Zlandicar alone geared the rest of my team. I used Blizzard armor for everyone but the tank and all of the non-visible pieces filled people out. I even patched some snowsquall until the corresponding Blizzard piece dropped or patched the hole with VT. Blizzard isn’t as good as VT gear but could get up to 3 upgrades every Zland run not counting the ore.
Update: I still recommend buying ores, but you should be looking at ToL for your weapons. Blood-Stained weapons are amazing (similar to CoV raid T1), but VERY expensive. A ToL ore should be 200 to 500k. I would do waxing crescent, ToL non-vis/weaps then ToL ores to replace waxing crescent for your tank at a minimum.
I backtracked a bit here and thought maybe I can do some ToV missions? If you can do Zlandicar, you can do Grikor and Velks. This opened up another source of ores and more gear for my tearm. I used the ToV ores for the three AC augments and then a proficiency (hdex) for my dps or resilience (hsta) for my shaman.
Update: Burning SV is your first mission. It's a DPS check like Zlandicar. If you can do 3m burn you should have no problem. Bloodfalls is the 2nd easiest mission and currently has a 3hr lockout (others are 6hr), so you can farm ores here.
Hdex? I wish I understood this earlier. I thought it was “helpful” until someone told me they DOUBLED my kill rate by having 2500 hdex. Wow, what an eye opener. High hdex is a little bit better than “helpful”. Seaglass Curio (+80 hdex) are the best source of hdex. They are not lore and you should have them on every piece of gear they can fit in besides the one VT proficiency aug and Driz’s rage. You get them by camping a CS named for hours on end or just doing CoV missions (zlandicar). There is also a ToV version of it called Jasper Infused Velium Jewel (+70 hdex). Farming Griklor/Velks and Zland get your hdex up quickly. You also get other augs from their chests which help patch you up quickly. I was clueless on how I was going to fill out augs and these three namers are enough to be functional Have you seen Hytiek’s CoV Gear matrix? https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/gear-matrix-cov.75484/ I read it weeks earlier but missed the focus on hdex and didn’t understand the importance. It’s a great template.
Between farming gear, I was grinding AAs. I did some WW caretaker farming for ores but the XP was slow and I always worried about pissing the locals off with my automation and hogging a camp. MQ2Grind and Restless Assault to the rescue. RA got me to max AAs in a couple of weeks… max AAs on six characters. Still blows my mind a bit. I was now able to PL other alts to play around with and also help friends get caught up so they could raid. After max AA and low hdex I was doing around 900k DPS sustained, 2.2m burn Once you get your hdex up to 2000+ the other missions should all be doable and have acceptable DPS to be raid worthy. This is where I’m at currently. I’m doing around 1.1m DPS sustained, 3.4m burn. This is lower than I should be because I box a monk (my original main) over another zerker. It’s hard to let go of the past.
I expect 1.5m DPS sustained and a 4.5m burn with another zerker and 2500 hdex.
Update: Max AA and 120 I sustain 2m DPS and 6m+ on burns. hDex is close to 3k on everyone. One of the biggest upgrades I found was Jann's Veil. It gave my group about 15% more DPS or so it seemed. You get it by finishing TBL Paragon.
This is a great community. I appreciate all the feedback I’ve had in the last few weeks and enjoy the automation as much or more than the game itself. I assure my wife that “I’m” not playing very much, but I still catch myself just staring at the group in awe as the blow stuff up.
TLDR: Start with the correct group, CWTN plugins, MQ2Grind, hdex,MQ2Wire (obsolete with new MacroQuest) and Mode 8 Hunter Tank and then enjoy the fun parts of the game.
Armor/Gear Path:
100 - Latent Ether/Gribbles/Mark of Valor
106 - Conflagrant (baz)
110 - Snowbound (baz)
115 - Waxing Crescent/Velium Threaded Tank (buy rots)
115 - Blizzard/ToV/Zlandicar Mission Gear rest of team (farm with your team)
120 - Luclinite Ensanguined/Ore Gear
--------------------
Update 6-9-21
A couple things that I have figured out along the way that have helped me tremendously.
MQ2Wire - this plugin optimizes your resources so it's not burning CPU rendering video on your background windows. This has made everything MUCH more reactive. No lag. All tasks perform faster. A must have imo. Obsolete with new version of MacroQuest's built in frame limiter.
MQ2Grind - I started running Mode 7 (Sic Tank). This has also helped tremendously. It took me a while to understand the red circle and how it works. Now my driver picks up adds very quickly that are nearby so aren't beating on healer/dps. Instance XP nerfed in Feb 2022, MQGrind not as effective but still helpful.
After MQ2Wire I was able to do the other CoV missions I struggled with which made maxing out type 5 aug very easy.
About a month and a half ago I started noticing people multi boxing; even full groups. I’ve always been pretty good at playing two at the same time or even three to a limited extent where a 3rd merc can help fill out a group to keep chugging forward, but to box six accounts at once? How is that possible?! I craved automation. WFH was the perfect time to try out multiboxing. That landed me at Redguides and what a vast resource it is! It was definitely a bit overwhelming at first on what direction to go so the initial videos by Redbot were very helpful as well as Sic’s CWTN and Mission videos. I thought it may be helpful to write a guide for people that want automation and want to get back to end-game quickly.
It starts with group makeup. You can’t skip this if you want things to be fast. You need the trifecta (tank/cc/healer) and then dps. The best group you can come up with is SK/Bard/Shaman and then Ber/Ber/Bst. I’ve tried other combos, but this is the consensus that it’s the best DPS you can get and with high DPS everything else is easier and takes less TIME. You want to level up your buddies Druid? Make this group first and get them to max AA/group gear and that chore will be a helluva lot faster. I know because I didn’t do this at first until I started watching DPS and kph and comparing it to what other people were doing.
I wasn’t afraid to spend money so I went the quick route by buying Heroic characters and plat for gear This let me group my new army with my 95 monk and shaman and immediately let me do Gribbles. If everyone starts out at 85 you're going to have to grind a bit until you are closer to 95. Gribbles got me an easy source of level 100 gear by using named drops and Marks of Valor. Latent Ether is the first cheap/good armor upgrade that gives your dps and survivability a big boost.
You need CWTN plugins. Kissassist is great, but CWTN is easy mode. I played around with Kissassist with my new army when they were level 1 to get used to moving them around, camping, chasing, etc and changing the ini files. CWTN doesn’t have ini files to manage. Sic’s hotkeys guide, https://www.redguides.com/community/resources/sics-hotkeys.1150/ is also extremely helpful. If CWTN makes it, buy it, you’ll thank me later. It’s one of those deals where you are HAPPY to give them your money. I read in another post someone said they couldn’t wait for release notes and they were spot on. Sic, CWTN and Hytiek make this game easier. I know there are others, but these are the three I feel I benefited the most from.
Once you have your group on plugins Gribbles is silly easy. You can go to FM and grind to 106 or even 110 easily. I liked the wolf area, there are no namers so there isn’t competition. 106 is the next big level as it opens up conflagrant gear. Conflagrant gear is great for returning players and lets you field a viable team that can push closer to 115. I used a lot of it at 115 because I leveled faster than I could source gear. The next push is 110 when it opens up snowbound armor. Snowbound is silly cheap and helps tremendously with the push to 115. At 115 you can get Waxing Crescent Armor from ToL. It's nearly equivalent to the CoV Velium Threaded/Ore armor but much easier to get.
When grinding to 115, you have some options. You can buy ToV TAs which get you about halfway there, but I did the MQ2Grind route. You can also buy ToL TAs which give similar XP to ToV. What a great macro. Hytiek is super helpful and taught me a lot about the game. I admire his drive for efficiency and he is a lot smarter than I am. One of the reasons I felt obligated to write up a guide was to save people from having to ask the creator’s questions. I did break down and purchased TAs to get my tank to 115 so I could get to the next gear level faster. I did a lot of MQ2Grind Darkness Howls.. probably too much, but I did stop and try to do ToV progression but wasn’t able to until my bard could mez and I had better gear and AAs. At this point ToV namers were too hard and by the time my bard could mez I could do harder content in CoV.
Update: I still recommend buying ores, but you should be looking at ToL for your weapons. Blood-Stained weapons are amazing (similar to CoV raid T1), but VERY expensive. A ToL ore should be 200 to 500k. I would do waxing crescent, ToL non-vis/weaps then ToL ores to replace waxing crescent for your tank at a minimum.
I backtracked a bit here and thought maybe I can do some ToV missions? If you can do Zlandicar, you can do Grikor and Velks. This opened up another source of ores and more gear for my tearm. I used the ToV ores for the three AC augments and then a proficiency (hdex) for my dps or resilience (hsta) for my shaman.
Update: Burning SV is your first mission. It's a DPS check like Zlandicar. If you can do 3m burn you should have no problem. Bloodfalls is the 2nd easiest mission and currently has a 3hr lockout (others are 6hr), so you can farm ores here.
Hdex? I wish I understood this earlier. I thought it was “helpful” until someone told me they DOUBLED my kill rate by having 2500 hdex. Wow, what an eye opener. High hdex is a little bit better than “helpful”. Seaglass Curio (+80 hdex) are the best source of hdex. They are not lore and you should have them on every piece of gear they can fit in besides the one VT proficiency aug and Driz’s rage. You get them by camping a CS named for hours on end or just doing CoV missions (zlandicar). There is also a ToV version of it called Jasper Infused Velium Jewel (+70 hdex). Farming Griklor/Velks and Zland get your hdex up quickly. You also get other augs from their chests which help patch you up quickly. I was clueless on how I was going to fill out augs and these three namers are enough to be functional Have you seen Hytiek’s CoV Gear matrix? https://www.redguides.com/community/threads/gear-matrix-cov.75484/ I read it weeks earlier but missed the focus on hdex and didn’t understand the importance. It’s a great template.
Between farming gear, I was grinding AAs. I did some WW caretaker farming for ores but the XP was slow and I always worried about pissing the locals off with my automation and hogging a camp. MQ2Grind and Restless Assault to the rescue. RA got me to max AAs in a couple of weeks… max AAs on six characters. Still blows my mind a bit. I was now able to PL other alts to play around with and also help friends get caught up so they could raid. After max AA and low hdex I was doing around 900k DPS sustained, 2.2m burn Once you get your hdex up to 2000+ the other missions should all be doable and have acceptable DPS to be raid worthy. This is where I’m at currently. I’m doing around 1.1m DPS sustained, 3.4m burn. This is lower than I should be because I box a monk (my original main) over another zerker. It’s hard to let go of the past.
I expect 1.5m DPS sustained and a 4.5m burn with another zerker and 2500 hdex.Update: Max AA and 120 I sustain 2m DPS and 6m+ on burns. hDex is close to 3k on everyone. One of the biggest upgrades I found was Jann's Veil. It gave my group about 15% more DPS or so it seemed. You get it by finishing TBL Paragon.
This is a great community. I appreciate all the feedback I’ve had in the last few weeks and enjoy the automation as much or more than the game itself. I assure my wife that “I’m” not playing very much, but I still catch myself just staring at the group in awe as the blow stuff up.
TLDR: Start with the correct group, CWTN plugins, MQ2Grind, hdex,
Armor/Gear Path:
100 - Latent Ether/Gribbles/Mark of Valor
106 - Conflagrant (baz)
110 - Snowbound (baz)
115 - Waxing Crescent/Velium Threaded Tank (buy rots)
115 - Blizzard/ToV/Zlandicar Mission Gear rest of team (farm with your team)
120 - Luclinite Ensanguined/Ore Gear
--------------------
Update 6-9-21
A couple things that I have figured out along the way that have helped me tremendously.
MQ2Grind - I started running Mode 7 (Sic Tank). This has also helped tremendously. It took me a while to understand the red circle and how it works. Now my driver picks up adds very quickly that are nearby so aren't beating on healer/dps. Instance XP nerfed in Feb 2022, MQGrind not as effective but still helpful.
After MQ2Wire I was able to do the other CoV missions I struggled with which made maxing out type 5 aug very easy.
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