f13.net

I'm very pleasantly surprised with the game as it is now.

I quit a few months after release for various reasons. The difficulty level of most mobs was such that grouping was required for way too much content (at least for my tastes).

Now I'm playing again and enjoying it, and for reasons I haven't felt since UO and the first EQ.

My first suprise was that I had some free time sitting on my account, some type of promotion that I wasn't aware of. I had come back out of 90% boredom 10% curiosity, and finding 10 free days available was a nice way to get back into it.

They have changed a lot from group to solo content. I bought the All in One download after my first few days back, to get the cheap expansions. The new areas are cool to explore and very nostalgic (Butcherblock, Feydark, etc). I haven't been interested in "exploring" geography in a game for a long time, but this is actually fun.

It's taken me a little time to get out of the power leveling mindset that a couple of years in WoW has given me. I've had to stop thinking about the most "efficient" leveling. If anything, I'm leveling faster than I expected, so much so that many many quests go grey.

It may wear off, but I'm having a good time for the moment.

I play level-locked (you can turn off combat exp by rt-clicking the exp bar), and I still level too fast (questing experience).

I saw the potential in EQ2 when it launched, I love the Isle (and still prefer the original Isle) newbie experience. But the game really fell apart in the mid-teens. Now it's the only mmo I play, and I enjoy it. Of course, there are some gripes about group-only stuff, but that's going to happen in most mmo.

The EQ2 dev team is the best in the business imo.

I just resubscribed to EQ2 as well a couple days ago. I hadn't played for a couple years and I am enjoying it. I started as a Dark Elf and am really liking exploring Neriak. I used to play EQ as a dark elf and spent so much time in that city. The EQ2 version really captures the feel of the old city.

I think we've had this thread already.

<Mods please, append the why I hate this game thread here>

Ok, I played EQ2 in beta and absolutely hated it. I keep reading, though, that now it's a pretty solid and fun game. Where should I go to get all the standard information like classes and such? I'm not yet sure if I'm going to give a free trial a go yet, or not. I'm just in the initial stages of pondering if there's anything that gets me excited enough to play. I looked at ye ole standard Allakhazam's, but either it's poorly organized and lacking info, or my brain has finally turned to the diseased organ I always knew my company would turn it into.

Any help is appreciated!

Hopefully this isn't a retarded first post. I found this place from Lum's brokentoys.org, so blame him even though he has no clue who I am. Strangers make the best scapegoats imo.

It's actually pretty hard to find good information sites on EQ2, partially because it's been so hard to keep up with changes in the game. The official forums are the main resource for information, including links to other sites, which tend to be of the small limited focus type. I think tentonhammer has the best stuff out there overall.

EQ2i is pretty good, also -- http://eq2i.com

Thats my dawg.

Hartsman is still one of my favorite devs.  EVER


He is like the helmet   (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmet_%28band%29)  of gaming.  (the pink is a link, click it.)

Well, the first few levels have been fun so far. Still quite a bit to learn before I decide wether or not I really like it enough to subscribe. Unfortunately, my video card has chosen to remind me of it's age and frailty. Something's wrong with it. It's locking up when I get around a bunch of NPCs. It's not EQ2, though. It does it in Titan Quest as well. /sigh Uninstalled/Reinstalled drivers, etc. Anyways, just babbling because I'm all sad face right now.

To sum up: EQ2 fun at least up until level 7.

I got to give you guys a pretty serious demerit.  Your handling of Windows Vista is abysmal.  The user permissions are just completely borked when installing, at least from the EoF all in one pack, and need to be set by the admin.  A quick look on your tech support forums show an easy half dozen people with the same issue in the last day or two.  I have to imagine you are using up a lot of good will by not being proactive on this especially considering the amount of time since Vista's release.

The issue is that when installing from the EoF pack the launchpad.exe and the eq2.exe do not have permissions to write or modify the contents of the Program Files/Sony folder.  A simple work around is to, as admin, modify the properties of the Program Files/Sony folder to allow all Users Full Control of the Sony Folder.

I am sure that is not the optimal solution, but you aren't paying me to troubleshoot your programs.   :wink:

that's not a bug, that's a feature.

I also resubbed recently to EQ2, after trying it long ago on a PC unable to handle it.
Well, I would say I am generally liking it and will probably also buy Kunark.

The combat is ok. The crafting is better than many other games and it looks like the economy is also decent. I was surprised to see that I could profit from buying raw materials and craft something out of them, even as a very low level crafter. That's not something happening on every other MMORPG out there!
The variety of what you can build/use is also quite impressive.

But what is the real EQ2 strong point, or at least the reason that convinced me to resub, is the quality of the world building, the lore, the dialogs and in general the setting. You can easily see how there are some very inspired artists and writers working on the game.

Too bad the game mechanic designers seems much less inspired.

For example I was in Antonica, putting traps on creature dens. I was able to get quite efficiently pelts and meat in this way (how come I can get elephant meat from small critter dens, in a place where there is not one single elephant? Mysteries of Norrath). At some point a big bear pass by and I kill it.
Heck! Tens of pelts and meat pieces coming out that small critter den, and nothing on a big bear corpse? Why can't I just get from animals what is supposed to come from animals?
Hunting low level creatures to farm crafting materials would simple be much more fun than double clicking on random spawning critter dens, and it would easily add to the atmosphere instead than killing it.

Too much use of Excel to design a game is not always a good thing.

eq2i.wikia.com, but yeah. Great site. My ingame /browser homepage.

I entirely agree about burning goodwill.    (Weirdly, that phrase in particular is one that's framed a lot of what I think about consequences of action or inaction in live services.)

And, thanks -- Your post reminded me to check in with the Launchpad team to see what the status is on the improvements here.  It's been more than a small pet peeve of mine as well.

Just got word back that at least the first round of "making things better" (e.g. Don't just quietly freeze up while trying to write; At least tell people how to fix it) is out of dev and in the pipeline to make it out to the live servers.  There are smarter solutions down the line, but in the meanwhile I'll gladly take "better than today."

- Scott

To paraphrase the great Gary Gygax - if you can live in a world of goblins and fire-breathing dragons then surely you can accept that hide comes from dens not actual animals.

Yeah, sure. It is just a bit more difficult to find the world immersive when it is like that, or when a sorcerer needs to cast 4 fireballs to kill a fish (not a shark, a fish), only because the other mobs in the zone are in the 10-20 level range and so the fish also has to be level 14.
Additionally as I was saying, it is not only a matter of immersiveness. It is simply more fun when you have a purpose in going back to an old zone and do a few easy kills instead of farming clickables.

BTW yesterday I dinged. It's good that I can solo gnolls now. Too bad that turtles still pwns me. Damn ninja turtles in disguise!

No really, I like the game.

I'm still having fun with it, but haven't chosen a class yet. I know I'll be primarily soloing just because a) I like to be self reliant and b) It's easier to stop what I'm doing at anytime and attend to the fiance as needed.

Any suggestion as a primary soloer newbie who doesn't have any twink cash? I was thinking necro, which wouldn't be too bad, even though I kinda hate pets, but was reading something about Adept spells (whatever they are) or something being really expensive. I tried monk, but I'm thinking no, too boring so far. At least at level 9 (I know, level 9 does not represent the game when you have 80 levels, but still, I'm bored already.)

I'm reading the main boards too, but a lot of what I'm reading kind of baffles me. There's a lot to absorb which is awesome at the same time that it's overwhelming. Unfortunately, in this genre, the "pros" tend to speak a different language full of acronyms and assumptions that you know what the heck they're talking about. I know I've done it myself having played MMO's and MUDs since the 90's. But it makes for an even tougher learning curve when you're reading the boards not knowing wth half the people are talking about.

Anyways, I'm babbling now...

Any help at all is so very much appreciated.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to add: I'm also having a hard time reading through the guides since most of it seems to be old information. The classes have changed a lot since release, at least as far as progression goes. So I'm trying to sort through all of that and not sure what's no longer valid.

The game is well-tuned for soloing of any class, really. However, Furies and Wardens seem to be excellent solo and in groups. I also never had any problem soloing my berserker. No matter what class you choose, you will be able to solo fine as long as you play to the classes strengths. Most solo exp comes from quest completion, not grinding mobs.

I think saying that a warden is excellent solo is a stretch.  I can solo fine and quite safely on my warden, but it's often slow and boring.  I'd much rather solo on my brigand even though I die more often.  It's a lot more interesting. 

Through level 14, soloing with an Inquisitor has been fairly decent. It seems to be a little slower than other classes, but part of that has to do with the quality of my spells, I think.

In the past I know people complained that the cleric types (templar, inquisitor) were slower for soloing since their DPS was low (they could survive forever because it took that long to actually kill something).  However, from what I have read (I am thinking of an inquisitor alt myself for Kunark) alot of that can be overcome by AA now.  Apparently there is a battle priest AA line which gives a good boost to their meleeing abilities.  If leveling quick isn't a priority you could look into what others here have done (myself included) and lock your combat XP.  That would give you a chance to build up some AA off of quests in multiple zones and boost yourself that way (cheaper then better spells at least). 

I'm not sure if we have any sages to make spells in BC (wouldn't be surprised to find out Sky has one of those too) but even if we don't you can usually find someone to make spells for your by asking in the public channels as long as you provide the rares.  Also, even though they aren't quite as good Adept 1's can usually be gotten pretty cheap on the market and are a perfectly good substitute for Adept 3s at these levels (I wouldn't bother with Apprentice 4s in general unless they are vastly cheaper then Adept 1s)

Once I got some AAs into the combat lines, my mystic became a quite good soloer. Able to keep up with normal sort of solo quests and grind through mobs quite easily. Huge difference.

Good info, Chorulle and Numtini. I have been meaning to look up the Battle Priest spec information, just haven't had the chance yet. I will do that in the next week. I need to figure out how to lock combat xp. I have been gaining AA experience and points, but have not spent any yet. In any case, the Inquisitor is really enjoyable. It helps that I started in Neriak, too, so I get some all new content after my long hiatus. I'll be sticking around and playing through the Kunark release at least. Good stuff.

Shadowknights are a good solo class, but I might be biased. Monks are fun, too. You can't really get a good feel for a class until you start hitting your twenties. Once you have most of your early class functions in place and start customizing with some AA. You can't make a judgement on monks until you have feign death!

The important thing is to pick whatever you find fun to play, you'll always be more effective. If you hate pets, don't play a pet class. Also pick a complementary tradeskill. Having my shadowknight able to make his own armor means I can always have at least mastercrafter armor.

Soukyan, battle cleric does seem to be the build of the moment for Inqs. AA spent in one tree can't be respec'd to the other tree, so make sure you have a gameplan. Might want to drop one point in the starter skill for the first tree and then build right to BC on the second tree. Lock combat exp by right-clicking on the experience meter and selecting it from the context menu.

You are limited to 50 AAs in either tree, but you can respec however you'd like. That went in at the end of July.

Thanks for the advice. I'm thinking Brigand so far. I'm such a rogue at heart. SK's look fun, but man there's a lot of them. I know that shouldn't make a difference, but I hate playing classes that are saturated.

Anyways, here's hoping the game remains fun. I haven't played an MMO since May '06 and I've been missing them pretty bad.

I have a level 52 Battle Priest Inquisitor. Once he hit about 35ish AA's he was easily out DPS'ing my same level SK that I duo with. Now that the Inq has around 42 AA's the SK actually has a hard time holding aggro if I go all out DPS with the Inquisitor.

The best way to spend the AA's is to do the minimum amount of points in each of the skills to turn your spells into combat arts. You want to get all the way to the bottom of the tree to get as many combat art conversions as possible. After that go back and fill in points to spend the required to get the Battle Priest skill, keeping in mind that 5 points in one of the skills is about equal to the Adept 3 of its counterpart spell. After getting Battle Priest you'll want to switch to the Cleric tree and spend enough to get to the 100% melee crit skill (Stamina line I think).

I can't really say though how either class would do solo as I always play them as a duo.

The best solo class I have found is my Swashbuckler. Than again I could just be biased because that was my first char, the first I got to 70, and he's also semi raid geared.

My Brigand is level 17 now. I keep trying other classes, but so far he's my fav. I did nuke some stuff on a brand new wizzy this morning and that was kind of fun. Bit too one dimensional, though. Not sure if that's the case throughout its career. I still want to play a caster type, but my favorites always seem to be the most played. Fury, being the big example. I love the self containment of that class and versatility. But apparently, so does everyone else. I don't think I'll ever do much in the way of raids, but I'd like to keep that option open by not playing a class that's overly saturated. Anyone play a Mystic? Was thinking of looking at Shamans next but nobody seems to play them and I'm curious as to why.

As far as the Brigand's AA's go, I've gotten 10 so far. I'm trying to do all the quests I can find so that I don't have to go back later for them to catch up on AA's. I'm going Str/Wis with him and after accidently putting 1 pt. into Str, I've put the rest into Wis. Got 4/4 in that line so far. Was going to keep going up it, but not sure of the specifics yet.

There's two ways to approach AA - the optimal path and the supportive path. They might be the same. Optimal path is what everyone on the boards thinks you should take. Supportive path is the stuff that supports the way you play. After taking the optimal SK path (to Reaver), I found the end ability isn't very useful until you're in the 60s, I never use it. I still haven't tried respeccing across trees, but I did respec a couple weeks ago with a character and got a message that points could only be spent in the same tree (ie no EoF pts can go to the KoS tree).

The reasons certain classes are popular is that they are good classes that support play archetypes. I don't know a 'bad' class in EQ2, just classes that don't fit your playstyle. I'd go with your preferences for playing over class popularity...playing an underplayed class you don't enjoy is a recipe for quick cancellation or a lot of frustration.

I have a lvl 33 wizard, and he's ok (My beta/release EQ guy was a wiz). But very one-dimensional. Hello, root/nuke.

They changed the 'not spending in a different tree once you allocated to a particular tree' an update or two ago.

With free respecs being handed out left and right (you can get five by talking to a Counselor at any city and there have been several in recent updates as well) I go with what helps me the most now and change as necessary.

This is good information. I'm glad I can get some respecs. Now at least I don't have to worry so much about screwing up.

I think you can also now pay for respecs at a slowly increasing price that also slowly descreases over time.... Does that make any sense at all?

It within 30 days I think.  The first one is cheap, the second one is like 10 gp? and then it goes up pretty quick.  If you wait 30 days it drops back to a lower price.

10gp is the cheapest now, but has been mentioned you do get 5 free in each tree. Those should last you awhile.

I only got one free on my monk, who's been around for a couple years now as a crafter alt :) But he was level 12 and had AAs, so he should have a full battery of respecs.

Really, though, I'm just pissed about not being able to play since GU39 with no fix in sight, no reply from tech support (even before their outtage from wildfires), nada. I'm not quite at the point where I want to bother Scott H while they're in Kunark crunch-mode, but it's pretty shitty imo.

Playing again also (hi SoE and thanks for the free month) and noticed a lot of nice little changes that make the world better (stopped playing at LU31). After leveling alts over and over again in WoW, and finally getting back in the game way behind(levels etc) I really want to thank the people responsible for mentoring  :awesome_for_real:

I tried this for the first time during the Sep Winback thingy.  I guess I must have created a trial account years ago but I have no recollection of that.  So far I'm mostly having fun... mostly.

There are a couple key things that are really bothering me though.  There are no fucking runners and everything is on a tether?!  What the fucking shit?!  The moment it hit me I almost quit out and canceled.  Grrrrr.

Please tell me crowd control comes into play some time later in the game?

Not so much. CC can save your bacon if you pull multiple encounters but for the most part, single group encounters are balanced for zero CC. That said, CC can make boss mobs that have help MUCH easier. So, in EQ2 CC is "nice to have" and not "must have".

I tried to play yesterday but just couldn't get motivated even by extra xp.  I think maybe I need more gore and exploding mob bits right now.  I have the new expansion and maybe that'll help although I didn't like the new race one bit.  Not just because it's ugly and the female has nearly no customisation but it's racial abilities are stupid looking and useless.  Still, I think I'll be okay after my need for blood and guts is sated.  Unless I get addicted like I did that time to girly games about weddings and baking cake.  That took months and months to get over.   :|

Ahh, racial abilities.

I logged in to show my fiancee the halloween masks ("they're goofy looking") and the first thing she commented on was how Neriak was filled with faeries. Evil faeries, whatever. I explained how they were 'new' and had a nice racial ability, so everyone wanted to play them. She found it funny that people would run around as a little faerie just to get safe fall.

I have about zero motivation to play EQ2 right now. The service interruption killed all the plans I was in the middle of and a raft of good games came out at the same time. Also, $40 for an expansion isn't something I do any more. I know I've already  :dead_horse: but if there were a kunark-only download, it'd be a no-brainer. As it is, I'm not sure if I'll be shelling out full price for something that's geared to 1-20 56-80 when I'm 22-42.

After reading my Old Content thread, it just drives home how much these games are not made for casual folks like me.

Like I said in the Kunark thread. They've streamlined the 20-70 progression too. So, while I know you don't want to outlevel the content you've got too quickly, maybe now's the time to progress to the 50s-60s or so and hit some new stuff?

Then again, I've been playing TR (yeah, yeah, laugh it up) to death lately, so I can't honestly say I've had a lot of motivation to play EQ2 lately either.

Eh, it's not too bad. I don't really lack for stuff to do and still level a bit too fast. I will keep playing my SK for a while, mostly because the level cap went up and a lot of people will be moving into new areas. I really don't want to get above -20 or so of the level cap, because I don't care for a lot of the people I've met at the level cap. Don't really want to group with many, and I want to contest areas even less. At least in the lower level game some twinked-to-hell alt will burn through some stuff and be gone in a day or two.

The entire concept of gear progressions and raid-readiness and DKP or whatever the hell else goes on in teh endgame is totally dick-wilting to me.

Don't know where exactly to put this so I chose here!

My casual guild tried Tomb of Thuuga this weekend, our first RoK raid attempt.

The Tomb is entered above one of the waterfalls below Sathir's Span in Fens. Every raid member has to enter on their own. I don't know if this is a new RoK feature. Thuuga is a 5 day persistant zone.

There is one named, Tairiza the Widow Mistress, a large drachnid/drider. All trash must be cleared first. The trash are single mob encounters, skeletons or drachnids. The skeletons fear and the drachnids AE stun. They take some getting used to, but after a few of each, they weren't a problem.

Tairiza is a fun encounter (even though we failed 6 times and called it a night.) Every 30 seconds or so, 1-3 people in the raid will be coccooned. Literaly. Looks cool. While coccooned, a player loses ~800hp every 2-3 seconds. Maybe its per tick but it seemed faster than the normal 6 seconds. The coccoons are attackable and can be broken open. The player inside can be healed. I am guessing they have about 30k hps so it takes no more that a few seconds to open them.

So the drill is that everyone but the MT and ST switch to the coccoons when they appear. The closer everyone is to each other, the less time it takes to get to the coccoon. The wrinkle is the AE stun. This lengthens the time people stay in the coccoon. If the coccoon kills a player, Tairiza gets healed about 2%. At 40% health, Tairiza spawns 6(?) level 83 heroic spiderlings.

It took us several tries to get communication about the coccoons right. Too many people talking at once early on. We endd up dedicating one player to calling the coccoons with a shorthand description for location: caster corner, dps corner, front of the mob (tanks), back of the mob. Our formation was like a Y with the MT/ST at the bottom of the Y, mob turned. Caster corner was left branch, dps corner right branch.

We needed 3 healers on the MT/ST to keep him/me (80 zerk) up reliably and yet we both died a few times each attempt. She hits hard (5-8k) but not fast. I only had 11,500 hps so you can see how important healing was. Our guardian MT has closer to 15k and better mit.

All in all a creatively designed encounter. Coordinating this without voice would be nigh impossible given the importance of getting to the coccoons fast.

Nice write-up shiz, I love to hear what I am most likely not going to see.  I don't think I am going to go down the raid-path again, maybe in a casual guild.  Finally just got my troub up to 79, and weaponsmithing at 75 on the weekend. Obviously taking it pretty chill. Please continue these write-ups, any loot info?

You can spy all the l33t loot you want at www.lootdb.com.

If you want a casual guild and you are on Perma, The League of the Ignoble Liver is very welcoming. And we would love to have a 80 troub.

Thanks for the offer, but currently hacking away on Crushbone. 

How casual is you casual raiding?  Might have an interest at some point, but for the time I get on right now, there is plenty of solo/group stuff for me to do.  Kunark has a fuck-tonne of solo content.  I am still trying to finish everything in Kunzar's Jungle.  Then start with the group content.

That's the reason the raid stuff doesn't get me too down in EQ2, there are a lot of quests for solo/group, even if the rewards are usually pretty lame. I just remembered last night to hit up the Island of Mara to get my crafting charm and 36-slot harvest bag. Got a decent +25int wrist slot upgrade before the (short) questline jumped into the dark orange levels. Still, a nice evening of new content.

There now even seems to be a lot of crafting content - home city faction rewards/writ grinding, grandmaster quests (which also give faction), straight up crafting quests - new lands, new profit series, Kunark faction quests and rewards (some real nice shit), and epic tradeskill quests. 

We do short raids on Wednesdays and longer stuff on Saturdays, but it is nowhere close to every week. We are still working on the RoK instances and quests. At our peak raiding, we did two days a week 3 weeks a month, usually starting at 8:30pm eastern. Attendance is voluntary. As far as loot, anyone who needs an item rolls d1000. Highest roll wins. One Fabled piece per person per raid unless everyone that wants the item has already won something. It is very civilized.

If you are 79, leave Kunzar. Quest rewards and exp better in Jarsath Wastes. You can always come back to KJ. Hell, I never finished all the ones in Fens.

You might have someone accidentally walk into the widowmistress, and die to her. Usually she stops casting at that point and won't do the caccooning bit. The fight is a lot easier at that point.

Do you mean to start the encounter? I haven't read anywhere that she is bugged in any way.

No - before the encounter. If she puts up her swords and stops the casting animation you have won.

So, wait. There's this giant frantic arguably encounter-defining debuff effect which can be negated by... body-checking?

I can't think that's intended.

So we popped our Protector's Realm cherry on Saturday although we did not clear it.

Upon entering the zone, nothing is aggro. The map is identical to the second half of Crypt of Agony, with a named in each of the four rooms.You have to go find a group if adventurer NPCs who ask for help and give you four shards needed to activate the first four named.  There is no trash at all. 

The first named has a harm touch every 30 seconds or so. Took us two tries to get that down. Just had to make sure one of the OTs had intervene/intercede up on the MT to absorb the HT.  The next three named are basically the same. They have a large radius AE of differing damage types. They also knockback a lot. The last one we did fears as well. These are your basic jousting fights where someone uses a parser/timer to call "OUT!" before the AE and then everyone charges in after until the next call. The key is to make sure that the MT keeps the mob locked down because the AE does more damage the closer one is. Clearly if a caster/dps pulls aggro into the body of the raid and the AE goes off then, it is corpse city. Our MT had 16k HPs buffed. The other guardian had 13k and I had 11k (zerk with limited hp buffs).  After these four I hade died enough to go from 100% equipment  to zero and then burned a 50% repair kit. Non-tanks were mostly at 50%.

When each of these four named dies (and by the way they drop anywhere from 17-24p each so that helps cover costs and is a welcome change) someone in the raid gets a shard in their inventory. These four shards are used to trigger the next mob.

After killing the four named you go back to the adventurer NPC group. They now double cross you and lock you in a room with Doomcoil, a stone cobra with two AEs, one of which includes a memwipe. Since the room is locked, the raid only gets one chance to get it right since reviving puts you outside the locked door. Every time someone dies, Doomcoil heals for 40k. You can be rezzed. We did this by having the three tanks stand together and everyone else at max range to joust the AEs. The three tanks fought for aggro and if any non-tank got aggro, he/she had to run to the tanks to keep the AEs from hammering the softies. We were far from flawless, but we beat him.

Next, you fight the NPC adventurers who betrayed you. They kicked our ass badly about 10 times. They have a tank, scout, caster, healer and two mercenaries. The tank will taunt you on to him and the scout will wander through the raid attacking people. Mezz didn't work against them. Our MT dropped quickly every time. We just don't have the gear for this fight yet, I don't think.

All in all we had a good night with 5 good items and 2 masters.  Doomcoil dropped a spinning serrated sword that is arguably a few percent better than my fabled epic (DR of 100 vs 95 although my epic has better stats and a +12% crit proc.)  We now have an assassin dual wielding that and his epic.

We will be "farming" the first 5 nameds in PR for the next few weekends, I imagine.

I don't mean to knock the raid gameplay (this time), but I really wish they'd put the amount of effort into the rest of the game that seems to go into setting up raid encounters.

I don't know, it seems like there's a lot of work that's been put into single group dungeons and lots of solo quest lines from Kelethin to Kunark. Is it just that the single group dungeons aren't as intricate?

PR is actually a very un-raid raid. Yes, you need 24 people to win, but each fight is a straight up named fight.  The fact that there is no trash to mash through is a nice change too. The other one I wrote about, Thuuga, is more traditional in that you have to clear trash for an hour before you fight the named.

As far as group content, RoK offers options and that is good. CoA can basically be completed in an hour or so by 6 levels 80s as long as you have a tank and one healer. I did it with half guildies, half PUG in 43 minutes last night. For that small time investment you can potentially get 6 metal chests.

Vaults and Maidens are harder and I would be less sanguine about PUGing them but for 90 minutes, you have a shot at items that can rival tier 1 T8 raids.

Chelsith takes the longest and the metal chests are the most unreliable.

Then, in your early 70s you can run Unrest. This takes 2 hours but someone in the group is guaranteed to get the class set helm and BP. The more people in the group that already have them, the better the odds for those that don't.

Lastly, the solo content in Fens, Kunzar and Jarsath includes quests that give very nice legendary and even fabled quality rewards.

The balance has definitely gotten better in RoK.

It's cool to know there is a chance of Legendary or Fabled for solo players at some point. My main-on-hold SK got one metal chest from a lvl 27 named in Nektulos that dropped a master he couldn't use. My current main Wiz has gotten one from the named ghost wolf in Everfrost, which dropped garbage.

My monk got maybe a hundred or more in the time I was logging him in for a few minutes to farm the nameds in Wailing Caves, though it was all way too low or shitty to use (mid-teens), sold it all on the broker or transmuted when I was grinding that up. Used to be my main money-maker, now I mostly make money from Sinking Sands shinies.

Since BC is mainly Surly and me and we usually don't play at the same times, PUGs are really my only outlet. And I fucking hate PUGs. The couple of pickup raids I've done didn't go to badly, but they were boring and unrewarding.

We started running through Prismatic just for fun this weekend.  Considering I never thought I'd experience "story mode" it's been a blast.

Sitting at 77 with only the Skyfire solo content left, I've been going through the 60+ heroic content, getting little 1% xp updates and cruising through the old group play.  Will finally hit some RoK instances this week, now that I knocked my grouping rust off.

Sing it, sister. Half the fun I get from raiding is having 23 other pleasant people in Ventrilo to kill the dead time with.  If it was all business, then the loot ain't enough to do it. We spent 2 hours in PR and got 7 items. Those are not good odds to get an upgrade but it becomes acceptable when your friend gets the upgrade.

Grats on downing Doomcoil on your first try, with divine and poison gear it helps a lot, most raid members forgot on our 2nd try and it was a slaughter. Our first try was flawless, then again, we had 3 monks with 1 minute peels at that point so bouncing agro really wasn't an issue.

We're struggling with the overking in Chardok right now. Have been for like 2 weeks now.

COA = loot runs. (We're going for speed records now, pulling all 4 guardians at each named location for added fun. 28 minutes is our record)
VOES = not as good of a loot run. Plus the pits are just stupid.
Maidens = Challenge. This is in my mind the best single group dungeon I have been in. Most of the named have a...trick.

We beat these mofo's this weekend. The trick for us was locking down Meldrath. The trick with him is that every time Meldrath is hit with a melee attack, he has a 10% chance to change target (to #2 on his hate list). So I pulled him out of the mob where AEs wouldn't hit him and off-tanked him using nothing but taunts. I had a healer dedicated to keeping me up. The rest of the raid focused on the 5 left. Once 4 were down, the raid switched to Meldrath who dropped fast. The scout was last. Took us over a minute to kill her. I basically spent 3/4ths of the fight doing nothing but hitting my taunts as they refreshed!

The final mob we couldn't finish. At 38% health or so, he reflects all damage back on the raid until someone disables the two pillars in his room. We had one person in there clicking on the pillars with the wand thing but they never de-activated. Frustrating.

We did the new zone, shard of hate, last night. If you're guild is looking for something casual friendly like PR, it would be well worth a trip. I only did hate a few times in EQ, including my one and only hideous corpse retrieval until the 2 AM dealie that turned me off of raiding. Still, the zone was recognizeable even to me. The atmosphere and graphics are nice. I didn't see any of the lag that people on the forums are whining about. I felt like it got the same feeling as the old plane.

It has a couple of fairly easy tier one bosses and the little chests that run around (remember those from eq1?) drop some pretty amazing stuff. The encounters escalate really quickly though. We were doing great then got to one that one shotted almost the entire raid. We just laughed and moved on.

It was really nice going through a zone that nobody had read up on or done before. Some of the tricks are really obvious, but a much bigger sense of accomplishment than reading up stuff.

I am looking forward to a Hate run. In other news, Chelsith was changed so that all named are up every time. This makes it a better loot:time ratio than it used to be. Still one of the longer instances in RoK. Took us 1hr 45min vs 30-40min for Crypt of Agony and the loot tables overlap quite a bit.

Just finally hit 80 Troub, 80 Master Weaponsmith, and 400/400 Tinkering! Castassing :P

I am really looking forward to going through all the group content now.  Last night I went to Crypt of Agony which seems to be instance most advertised (quickest?).  CoA was very ho-hum, not impressed.  Hopefully get to go through a few more zones this weekend.  Any recommendations? Not worried about loot so much, but rather interesting zones and encounters.

Hopefully head up some casual raiding in the near future.  I am starting to see a lot more pick-up raids advertised for Protector's and new the Shard.  The expansion is maturing a bit.

Went through CoA and VoES last week.  VoES is really fast with a good PUG (haha).  The people I was playing with were only looking for some uber-rare dagger drop, and left me to clean up *everything else*.  Four hours of PUG and I am moderately geared, with new jewelry, 77 set piece chest and boots, Nathsar shortsword, and 2 chromatic essences with which to bribe a crafter for some nice 77 mastercrafted loots.

Finally got my teleport Hammer yesterday, man that thing is awesome.  Smack a Qeynos guard, instant port to JW.  Screw you, boat ride!

Next week should bring the ding (80!), and I'm hoping to run Maiden's and Chelsith.  Chelsith is supposedly the new model for single group instanced content, and with the new "all bosses all the time" implementation, I'm really looking forward to that one.

Supposedly the new Armored Warg Mounts drop in Karnors.  I guess that's one way to get people to play in there!

That's the reason everyone wants to go there. There's some very good loot for a zone that isn't too dangerous and can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Just picked up the JW Mallet as well, what a time-saver! except a few times I used it, zoned to JW, then took the sokokars to my destination....started to battle, then boom back to the docks! I have forgot to unequip it numerous times.

If you haven't already, make sure you do the "For a few Coins More" timeline starting in KP and ending with "An Ugly Bounty".  Great story, quests, and rewards.  The end reward is a nice fabled xxxx of Thugga jewelery item.

Still on the Fistful of Metal starter for that line.  Was too young to go waltzing into Varis when I started it.  Thanks for the reminder!

I you are a melee, don't select the neck item. I went with the Band of Thuuga. Much better neck item drops in Vaults (Ganak's Torque) and there is an easy quest for a neck item with a clickie 3k self-heal on a 3 minute timer that only requires on Vaults run.  Even the Sebilisian Choker in CoA is competitive with the Thuuga item.  Good rings are harder to come by until you raid a lot and even then the best melee rings tend to be scout only.

I had a tough time selecting which one to select. Stared at my options for like 10 minutes.  I already had the Sebilsian Choker, but the neck item looks the best for scout.  However, I did end up selecting the bangle which is a spell damage + and spell crit +, which I can definitely use as a troub.  In addition, it can be equipped in the earring or wrist slots.  Not sure if I made the right choice after all that.

Is that the quest you get from the top of howling stones, the one you have to jump across rocks to get to?

Yes. Get the quest from her. Kill the boss in Vaults and click an item in his room. Go back and talk to the questgiver (she didn't have an icon for me) and she will aggro so keep your Vaults group together.

My guild cleared PR on Saturday but I wasn't there. Nothing useable for me dropped, thank god! Wednesday we are trying Shard of Hate.

Break your raidforce in two for the x3 mobs or you will be sorry.

I believe everything is X4 now. Will report back Thursday.

Is this Hate? When we were in there everything was X4 and we were getting rather great drops from the trash.

Shard of Hate report:

We only had three groups. Trash is X4 but has a TON of hps. We got zero drops from the trash all night. Moving to the right, you find a questgiver who asks you to kill three named, one of which is right behind him.

The first named took two tries. During the fight it appeared that he picks a few members of the raid and just randomly goes after them until they are dead. He also throws 3 minute stuns and roots around. His knockback is large as well. Once he knocked our wizard several hundred meters away then chased him down and one shotted him. The wizard revived and the mob ran to the zone in and one shotted him again! We got adds the first time and took the wipe then got him the second time. He dropped a chain healer helm that procs a 1500hp ward on the healer's target!

The second named just randomly changes target and cannot be taunted so we just piled on and dps'ed him down. Boring, but still new. He dropped a sweet mage dagger with an effect that reduces resistability of spells.

The third named, Master P'Tasa, wasted us. If you taunt him or put a DoT on him, he starts proccing an AE that drains power and hps. Once that AE starts it is game over. Out of habit I taunted on the pull the first time. OOPS! The second time we lasted about 30 seconds and then it just fell apart. We ran out of time to try again.

Our first time, he wasted us, but we killed Master P last night in the first try. There's a lot of tricks. They're crackpot enough that it strikes me that they must have been leaked. I can give you what we know. It IS otoh a long fun fight.

I'm working on a theory that if you get adds from the trash, you get serious drops. It always seemed to be the long add fights where we got them.

I pulled two a few times but it didn't help for drops. It wouldn't surprise me if they nerfed the rate a bit when they moved them to X4.

No, they were x4 last night and we got three exquisites off of the monster treasure chests and one off of a patron of hate (when we managed to pull three of them)

We are now doing SoH on Wednesday night with about 3 groups, through the first two nameds. The trash loot is sick.

We also cleared Protector's Realm in about 90 minutes on Saturday. Makes raiding easy to do when the time committments are low.

Since a lot of the raid stuff has ended up here. Master P has been totally redone, so if you had a successful strategy, it probably won't work again.

I don't know about anyone else, but it looks to me like EQ2 was gutted by AoC. We went from having an in-guild waiting list for raids to not being able to fill even spamming for PUGs.

yes. We're down to about 16 raiders. But it's also timing of people being bored of the expansion.

Our guild has had some people who left for heavier raiding calendars last summer coming back to us.  We haven't raided since AoC, but we have PR scheduled for Wednesday. 10 days ago we cleared it in 81 minutes with 6 pick-us so we are talking about Tier 2 now, but summer is a bad time to hit new content since we lose active players.

My guild is booming in EQ2 (which I don't play). I can't use our "new posts since last visit" feature because it's all EQ2 stuff.

There was an AoC obsession that lasted a couple of weeks, but 90% of them have gone back to EQ2 already, leaving me and a few others who are keen to stick with AoC.

It's weird because we were never an EQ2 guild until the last six months. We were a hardcore EQ1 raid guild that never got into EQ2, went through many betas and a couple of stints in WoW, and then suddenly EQ2 started impressing people last year and we became an EQ2 raiding guild en masse.

I'm already worried about how we're going to pay for our AoC player city because we're losing everyone back to EQ2.

You're welcome to come to Bat Country on Zug, Tale. Hell or high water our shit will get built.

I left Bat Country with Tyb to go to a fairly thriving guild in EQ2. Sadly, I only play it now during server-downs in AOC.

Well, I will come back to it again. It's a perennial favorite and I would like to catass up to 80 before they inevitably raise the cap again.

I've actually gotten in a decent casual guild on Oasis, and am enjoying the game. I did make a Sarnak last night and got him to 10 so I could try some crafting.

 :ye_gods:

Fuck no. I cannot do crafting. Tedium, preponderance of minutiae, I made it to level 3 artisan before logging out in disgust.

The crafting system in EQ2 is kind of odd. It's a bit upside down where the lowest levels are insanely difficult and the upper levels are insanely easy. Combines at level 70+ take maybe 6-8 "ticks" to finish easily in pristine quality. At the lower levels you're looking at 20-25 "ticks" to maybe get something pristine but most likely youre going to miss it.

I haven't found the failure ratet that bad.  With a couple of level 20-ish crafters I have only failed pristine on two or three occasions.  It's tedious, but easy once you learn the tricks.  Outright failure has been rare.

We've talked about the crafting tricks here before. Most of my crafters are in the 40s with a couple higher. It's really easy once you understand the system. Don't just react to events, use the +durability and +completion skills constantly. It's even easier now with the integrated panel. I usually hammer +dur for a while and then +completion until it's at risk for losing pristine, then build up the durability again for a while.

It's pretty boring, but with vet reward potions, rest exp and first pristine bonus exp, it goes ok for most classes. I chill out with the iPod for a couple hours and groove to some good music while crafting. There is still a large time investment that sucks, but it's nothing like it was originally was with the bajillion subcomponents. That was painful and people who want that to come back need therapy.

When you add on the amount of time you need to spend gathering stuff with the fact that the act of crafting is boring as fuck, I just can't do it. Not to mention the metric fuckton of recipes and components and skills and the buttons and it just makes my head hurt.

That's only up to level 20. Once you hit 20 you only use 6 of the skills, one station, and usually only 3-4 of the different resources.

Up to 10 is a total cluster with ALL the different possibilities, recipes, and resources needed. After 10 you are limited to 3 of the skills, after 20 you are silo'd down one path.

cry more newb


 :awesome_for_real:

I pk your flax.  :drill:

My favorite screenshot from my (short) time in AO LumCorp:

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/leet.gif)

It's like when Lord British got fooled by the UO AI  :oh_i_see: