17 levels and a cup of coffee

[Murgos]

So as I sit here and enjoy my fancy schmancy Kahlua & vanilla coffee on a clear and cool Sunday morning I think I'll write up some thoughts on the first few weeks of EQ-2 and put off tough decisions like who to start in the F13-FFL until closer to game time or if I should continue my save in Pirates! or, start over.

As you can probably guess from the title of the thread I made it up to level 17 last night with my High-Elf Predator.  Overall, I would have to say that these last 17 levels have been quite enjoyable and atm I am still looking forward to more.  It has taken me about three weeks to get this far, which isn't too bad considering that I work long hours developing the back end for a fairly significant gov't funded series of websites and take courses at the local U which eat up most of my free time.

Overall, I think EQ II get the job done graphically, I'm certainly not impressed by the art direction of the character models though I am very impressed by abilities of the coders, animators and texture artists to make the best of what are frankly just ugly bodies.  Slumped shoulders, bad posture, misplaced bulk, too wide hips, slack features and disproportionate arms and legs ... who the fuck was in charge of approving character models and what kind of corporate 'yes boss' culture allowed that to be then end result of 6 or 7 years of development and testing I just don't want to imagine.  The creature models actually look pretty good though, elephants and cows and gnolls and spiders and skeletons and etc... All are pretty nice (except orc’s, they were obviously done by the same nincompoops who did the main PC designs).   The terrain generally looks fantastic, even if the constraint of always being in some kind of canyon or ravine does bother the eye after awhile, I mean ALWAYS having some ridgeline in my view is rather tedious.  Well except for along the coast but that’s only because there they just use a sky box and let you run into "The Edge of the World: Columbus Can't Sail Here.".

Still, the stone textures and grass and trees are all nice.  The Archers Woods in Antonica is a pleasant little 1/2 acre wood (cough, cough).  I ran from Qeynos to Freeport a couple of days ago and was fairly impressed by what I saw along the way on the Steppes and in Nektulous.  The centaurs in the Steppes were pretty cool, though why the artists felt the pressing need to cover the groin area on the female ones is beyond me, “Hello!  Their genitals are in the REAR!”  The box canyon fever runs especially high in the Steppes, I grew up in areas where I can usually see the horizon so I guess it probably bothers me more than others.  Nektulous, just seems like a kind of dark sort of sparsely covered forest though I didn’t see much of it beyond the road, the bridges over rapidly running water were nice.

My Predator is quite able to solo after 17 levels, I can take green group mobs solo as long as the group isn’t too large or green^ groups with two or less members and green^^ that are singles.  Blue groups are tougher and hit or miss in kill-ability so I avoid them and forget anything blue^ or blue^^.  Mobs that are tagged ‘solo’ I can certainly handle up to yellow and depending on the mob even orange.  Mostly, my characters ability to solo this well is thanks to poison proc’s, the poison damage isn’t uber per se, it’s really just enough to be the margin of victory, so I expect it to get nerfed in the near future (because the EQ team likes to put things just out of reach).

I grouped with a brawler last night and it gave me a good bit of class envy, his normal hits were as hard as my special attacks and he had taunt and a better ability to take damage (though I am sure that will be marginalized in later levels).  I plan on going assassin once I finish the punishing betrayal quest (note to developers:  Don’t intentionally punish your players for exploring built in game choices, the idea is so obvious that every time you do it the whole world just gives a collective ‘meh’ and lowers your credibility a notch) so hopefully the utility of group evac’s and big single target damage will let me play a useful part in the EQ II endgame, if I ever get there.  Lord knows the minimal group run speed buff doesn’t make me an instant winner.  Mostly, I think I get groups just because they think the need to have some type of a scout after having all the propaganda about ‘at least one of each class’ in a group for maximum efficiency shoved at ‘em for the last few months.  Personally, I think an optimal group is probably two or three mages two healers and a tank.  I guess we will have to wait and see how it pans out post 40 when classes will be pretty much pigeonholed (Mmm, math minor, look up pigeonhole principle for full effect) into what they do best.

I guess I will wrap this up with some comments on crafting.  The short of it is “A greater cluster fuck, they could not make.”  In detail it’s a tedious, repetitious, pain in the ass.  The first 10 levels when all formulas and raw resource collecting are open to you are great.  You can dabble in this or that as time allows and your interests take you.  I made swords and armor and then some furniture and then switched over to making my apprentice III abilities (which was quite profitable).  Progressing to the more focused scholar seemed like a step backwards, a big step backwards.  Now, I am limited in what I can produce and if I want to make anything near useable for my level I have to suffer through some seriously monotonous grindage, 30 to 50 combines in a row type grindage.  I am anticipating moving up to jeweler with a lot of trepidation.  My options on production will become severely limited, acquiring needed raw materials will necessitate some serious time spent in picked-over places I don’t want to be in trying to build up points in resource gathering skills when I would rather be either killing or producing something useful.  Forget actually making something top-tier that requires rare drop recipes and rare drop components, the only people who are going to even see a portion of those items are the big guilds that have dozens of people out scouring the earth funneling things up the chain.

Yeah, it’s a lot of negative comments in there but despite that the game is actually enjoyable, for me at least, and looks to stay that way for a bit yet.  I’ll post an update when I get a good ways into assassin or jewelling.

[Alkiera]

As another scholar, I find your discussion of tradeskills odd.  Yes, you have to make some things repetitively, like the oils and resins, washes and tempers that are used in other combines.  They also come out in groups of 4 per combine, unlike most other crafted items.

The only other time there was much repetition in the crafting system is when I am doing tasks for my society, which generally are 'make 10 of X spell/art upgrade'.  I'll make the 10 inks, iterating thru each step in the process 10 times before moving on to the next, then buy/trade for the other ingredients from other crafters(mostly paper and quills from craftsmen, or iron spikes from outfitters at tier 2), then produce the items and turn them in, for decent cash reward.

Other than that, not that much repetition.  Nothing like buying 100 gold bars and 100 jaspers in EQ1 and grinding thru 20-40 points of jewelrycraft.  THAT was repetitive.  Especially the 8th or 10th time I had to do that with plat bars and some other gem when I was working thru the low 200's of skill.  Points 249 and 250 were terrible.

I'm an 18 scholar.  I've gotten there mostly from doing workshop tasks and making spell/art upgrades for myself and friends, and messing around with the other things scholars can make, like jewelry.  You get bonus exp the first time you make an item, and exp per item is based on the final quality level achieved; there may also be an exp bonus on 'final' items, as opposed to subcomponents.  For a first-time pristine item that is of your current level (in my case, 18), you get something like 10-12% of your level.  So you don't have to construct hundreds of tin foozles in order to get the ability to make iron foozles...  it's maybe a dozen, and you'll make that many just making app3's for yourself, or armor, or weapons over the course of the 10 levels you're in that material range.  Some people also advise the 'make one of every item' philosophy, so you get all the discovery exp from the items.

As a side note, patch the other day lower the skill requirement for antonica/commonlands(tier 2) to 20, from 40...  thus reducing the amount of lvl 25 people wandering the newbie zones looking for badger dens and fallen logs.

Alkiera

[Murgos]

As a side note, patch the other day lower the skill requirement for antonica/commonlands(tier 2) to 20, from 40...  thus reducing the amount of lvl 25 people wandering the newbie zones looking for badger dens and fallen logs.

Alkiera

That is welcome news.

As far as the combines go, add up the combines in a simple tier I App III rune.  Chloro Resin, Fossil Temper, cholro wash, Isonoid Reagent, Sepia Dye, Sepia Ink, tin bar, lead bar, tin spike, lead ornament, final combine -(11 combines and Im sure Im missing one or two) that gets you 1 tier 1 app III skill, how many times do you need to do this for just one players tier 1 skills?  70 - 80 combines?  Each one a solid 30 - 45 seconds at the station.  Now do the tier 2's...  completely different set of support items btw...   I had to do 10 throwing dagger sheathes for a tradeskill task.  That was just silly, every part of it was green, the payout was abyssmal (8 sp I think) Almost none of it involved scholar skills and each one again was 10+ combines.

It was tedious.  No other word for it.  Maybe its just not for me.  Or ill just save up some cash and buy premade components off the traders and stick too final combines for 12% exp.

My 30+ combines number earlier was maybe an exaggeration but I hear bad things about higher tier end items.

[Alkiera]

The number of combines for all the tempers and washes are cut into 4's for multiples...  One 'combine' gives you tempers for 4 combines at the forge, for example.  At least, if you produce a 'pristine' result, which isn't too tough if you spam the +progress spells enough to use most of your power each combine, and once a scholar, make careful use of the 2nd tier spells to push durability back up.  With other subcombines, you admittedly aren't so lucky.

As far as workshop tasks... I've heard of the 8-9sp rewards, tho I've never gotten one.  All the tasks I've done rewarded me with 36sp, most of them were for tier-2 app3's of some kind, essences or runes or spells.  At level 10 I had one to make pants, but it also gave 36 silver.  The task system selects from a list of final products that you should be able to make at your level, you get no new finals at lvl 10 scholar, just new subcombines, so you end up making things from tier 1, like pants.  Also, the algorithm or tables or whatever are a bit buggy, so you sometimes are asked to make things that have no recipie anymore.  This is due to them changing major systems so close to release... like, say, adding in the entire task system in the last week of beta.

Also, the higher tiers get better in that you cannot make as many of the sub-combines... You'll have to buy or trade with other crafters for the spikes to make scout runes in tier-2, and for spikes and ink if you become a jeweler in tier 3.  As a Sage, I'll have to buy quills and paper and ink to make spells... 98% of sage combines are finals, app3s for mages and priests.  The only other thing I think they have is patterns for use by tailors... which are made by craftsmen in tier2.  It's not organized well, yet.

The good news, scholar is more finished then craftsman.  Provisioner, the cooking/brewing offshoot of craftsman, has some semi-serious issues, tho they are the most self-sufficient of crafters.  Alchemists are 2nd in that regard, they only need glass from jewelers for elixers and poisons, which aren't very well described yet.  It's apparently Coming Soon to a Patch Near You.

Also coming soon..  Quality level for app3s will matter.  The first 'tier' will be app2, the final tier will be app4, with app3 in the middle... or something like that.  Currently, all app3s are identical, the only thing the quality thing does is give the crafter more exp for the combine.

Alkiera

[Murgos]

Scribe has its interesting side, it looks like a great crafting subclass for making money.  Fully half the population will need to come to you for app III and Adept III abilities.  So you will always be in demand.  Hopefully, you are playing a mage and take advantage of those abilities yourself.

For me jeweler was the optimal choice.  All my abilites plus half the wearable slots on a character is a pretty good selection of craftable items.  Making armor or weapons would have been interesting too, but I figure there will be enough of those around I can just buy the stuff I want.

The scholar society is usually dead empty, so I don't think I will have much to fear from competition...

[Wasted]

Dropping the harvesting requirements for tier 2 resources killed Antonica, it didnt fix any problem just moved it from one zone to another.

I moved back from the scholar society to the artisan one(after buying all my recipe books), the wholesaler has more stuff and the tasks are more rewarding.  I am surprided about how much you are getting from the workshop tasks Akiera so maybe I will give it another go, but when I took my first task in the scholar society I had to make 10 shaped tin sconce and got 6 silver for it, when the next task was for non-scholar items again I dismised the whole thing as crap.  I would have loved to be given spells/potions tasks.

As someone who is trying to enjoy the crafting experience I still find my self nodding off when ever I attempt to craft for more than 10 min.  There is certainly a lot of grindage, even though you get 4 resins/tempers/oil/washs at a time there is still big demand for these items and if you arent churnng them out constantly for trade/guildmates your overlooking one of the more important apects of the trade system and the interdependancy of the different classes.  I dont want to specialise further at 20, I was going to go sage but then I am completely reliant on others for my components.  I will be going alchemist instead.

[kaid]

I would recommend taking up harvesting even if you do not plan to be a crafter. At tier 3 tradeskill quest which goes off either your adventurer or craftsman level I am making about 46 to 48 silver per quest.  You also can sell resources easily on the open market if you price them just a lil bit below what the quests give you for them.

I tend to just grab stuff that is around me when I am fighting in areas like thundering steps and the ability to sell off the normal loot for 20 or 30 sp and then do the tradeskill quest and get another 48 REALLY helps the old pocket book.

At lower levels monks and predators do similar damages. Assassins and rangers quickly accelerate away from monks and hell everybody else damage wise in 20+. Just go to the eqplayers site and check out which classes have the biggest melee hits and the biggest magic hits. Assassins are tops in BOTH category.

The real funny thing is sorcs do not even show up in the top 15 or 20 for bigget magic hit.

DPS wise it goes kinda like this

Assassins king of the bling bling huge hits. Big nasty numbers but more difficult to setup attack runs to get them.

Rangers little lower max damage but the bows are easier to get repeated positionals with so dps is about the same as assassins.

Conj/wizard/warlock/necro. While none of these classes have any real big single shot attacks that compare with the predators they have a great deal of dots and fast recast damage which tends to recyle much quicker than melee abilities. They also possess some very amazing area effect powers that really can lay the smack down over time. If you want to see big numbers fly up these are not for you but man over time they do serious damage.

monks/bards both of these seem to be pretty similar dps wise very solid dps classes bards give group buffs and some cc and monks give tanking ability. I think over a long time bards probably outdamage monks but its pretty damn close from the parses I have looked at.

Berserkers Big tank who has some very nasty specials that can let them come into the ball park of monks damage wise while still packing huge ammounts of armor. These guys are frothing agro magnet lunies very good tanks with a pretty sizable damage output.


Kaid

[Toast]

Sorcs don't show up on the top magic hit because HO closing moves count as magic.

It's pretty messed up.

[Alkiera]

Sorcs don't show up on the top magic hit because HO closing moves count as magic.

It's pretty messed up.

Yeah, all those high magic hits are the finishing move to a sequenced HO which has to be finished by a scout.  They need to seperate HO's from spell damage, really.  Those HO's can't be done by the assassin solo, so he shouldn't get special credit for it.

Alkiera

[shiznitz]

WHO GIVES A FUCK WHAT CHARACTER/CLASS HAS THE UBER DAMAGE RECORD?