How difficult was it to get Mage pets on Green release?

[Vanessa]

When Green originally released, there were no vendors for pets, right? Or at least, at a certain level they stopped being sold?

How difficult was it for new Mages to get pet upgrades?
Were higher level Mages just stuck with pets that were like 20 levels under them?

[PatChapp]

Yes.

[cd288]

I've heard varying accounts, but the majority seem to be that it was very difficult. Some people had an easier time, but there will always be those who luck out on the RNG and get the research component drops they need. Although I seem to remember that some of the spells weren't even in the game for the first couple months, research or not (someone else could confirm that though).

Occasionally you could find a caster who had leveled up research a lot and had mats as well, but that was pricey.

Worth noting though that a lot of later mage pets are research only regardless, so having like one pet available on a vendor isn't absolutely a massive improvement anyway.

[PabloEdvardo]

mages were limited to their lvl34(?) pet until something like the solro patch

basically they were severely underpowered at launch once you got to 39+

Worth noting though that a lot of later mage pets are research only regardless, so having like one pet available on a vendor isn't absolutely a massive improvement anyway.

That's not true at all because that 1 vendor mage pet at 44 and 49 is much better than being stuck with your 34 pet

[PatChapp]

That's not true at all because that 1 vendor mage pet at 44 and 49 is much better than being stuck with your 34 pet

For sure,I leveled my velious era mage with vendor only pets until 50+. Slightly inconvenient at a couple levels at the worst

[Vanessa]

Hmm, I also remember most groups taking Mages over like everything else during the first couple months. I remember it was mostly Mages who were easily camping a lot of those limited time items as well, right?

Were they really doing that with just the level 34 pets?

[Fammaden]

Forget the early days of the deliberately missing pets, the words for 49 pet spell research were like tens of thousands of plat per page in classic. Yes, the same words everyone starts deleting left and right in Kunark. Shit was stupid.

[cd288]

For sure,I leveled my velious era mage with vendor only pets until 50+. Slightly inconvenient at a couple levels at the worst

If you’re soloing sure

[VincentVolaju]

Forget the early days of the deliberately missing pets, the words for 49 pet spell research were like tens of thousands of plat per page in classic. Yes, the same words everyone starts deleting left and right in Kunark. Shit was stupid.

I'm guessing that'll be the same way again on Green 2.0?

I was thinking of going Mage this time around myself, but if it's going to be that hard / expensive to get pets, I dunno bout it ... lol

[Cen]

A lot of forum posts complained about the difficulty. I then found a weird thing happening where all the low level kithkor day mobs dropped all types of spell crafting ingredients and the zone was getting super farmed by mages for a bit until the spell update patch

don't know if they fixed kithkor but keep it open as an option for easy words and stuff maybe

[brokenkiller]

Yeah mage pet research post 39 wasn't working and vendors didn't have the pets

[Vanessa]

Yeah mage pet research post 39 wasn't working and vendors didn't have the pets

I see. I'm assuming the Mage research past 39 not working was just a bug that a while to be fixed, right?

However the vendors not having pets is intentional?

So in the next iteration of Green, it would be safe to assume that getting Mage pets won't be as hard as it was in Green 1.0, because research should be working correctly?

[Totino]

I see. I'm assuming the Mage research past 39 not working was just a bug that a while to be fixed, right?

However the vendors not having pets is intentional?

So in the next iteration of Green, it would be safe to assume that getting Mage pets won't be as hard as it was in Green 1.0, because research should be working correctly?

Yes it is intentional. A lot of the best int caster spells are researched spells.

No. In the next iteration of Green, it is safe to assume that getting mage spells will be just as hard as it was on Green 1.0 because research not working correctly for the first few months is also intentional. It is not working, as intended. It was a bug in 1999, it is a feature on p1999

There weren't many mages at Green launch, there will be even less mages at Green 2.0 launch

[Jimjam]

A part of the issue was like 2/3 of the most active/aggressive levellers were mages, and many of them refused to work together.

This meant even once research was patched in mages were overlevelled. They needed a back log of pets to get to their most uptodate pet. There were far more mages than there were components dropping.

The scarcity of mages pages (or rather the excess of magicians) was compounded by everyone trying to level research - many useful pages got burnt trying to level up skills / brute force combine.

Exactly the same is likely to happen on a new server - mages are fun and effective (as highlighted by the proliferation of level 30 mages complaining the game was too hard while melees were all still stuck at level 13 with a Minotaur axe if they were lucky).

Would love to see an eq style server start with just the most basic classes - war, rog, cleric, wizard and add the deeper ones later.

[Swish]

I made a mage and was part of the problem. No ragrets tho.

[Balimon]

I see. I'm assuming the Mage research past 39 not working was just a bug that a while to be fixed, right?

However the vendors not having pets is intentional?

So in the next iteration of Green, it would be safe to assume that getting Mage pets won't be as hard as it was in Green 1.0, because research should be working correctly?

It was difficult, there was some confusion with the Devs how exactly the researched pets versus the vendor pets worked. Unless they mimic the original launch with research/vendors not working right, it will be correct next time around. The issue was that there were no vendor pets ( should be two every level until 44/49 ) at all past 20? I think? and that research was broken past 34, the combines didn't work because there were no vendor spells to 'level' up with since each combine takes the previous level spell.

There were never research combines for some of the spells, so when they removed the vendor spells it broke everything. I'm not sure I'm explaining it well, but that's the gist of it. It was fixed and should be different next go around, how exactly it will look I'm not sure, but I would find it safe to assume there will be more pets available then with the original Green launch.

I started day 1 and what I did was hit every merchant in neriak (rolled dark elf) and freeport that would sell to me and find the mats for the 16/20 pet spell combines, which isn't as bad, I just had to buy words of dimension for the 20 spell. I used the 20 for a while till 29 or so before I could get the 24 pet made. Generally I was always a spell rank behind pet wise. The best way I found the mitigate that was to use nukes to kill the mobs for exp. It worked well, I was level 42 or so before they patched pets back in and I was able to get a level 39 pet.

It was still difficult because the words you need drop off mobs higher level then the spells, so generally you would need to buy the words because you can't really camp them yourself just yet. And they were expensive!! I made do with the 44 fire pet until 49 because it was just cheaper and I failed my earth combine. 49 was such a relief because the earth pet was on the vendor.

TLDR:

If you like mage and want to play one at a Green launch, they will work fine, just be aware that without focus items or having every pet at every spell rank, it will be a slower and more difficult leveling process than you might want it to be.

[Coridan]

It was difficult, there was some confusion with the Devs how exactly the researched pets versus the vendor pets worked. Unless they mimic the original launch with research/vendors not working right, it will be correct next time around. The issue was that there were no vendor pets ( should be two every level until 44/49 ) at all past 20? I think? and that research was broken past 34, the combines didn't work because there were no vendor spells to 'level' up with since each combine takes the previous level spell.



I'm pretty sure it was intentional because apparently Mages were broken that way when EQ launched in 99. I wouldn't know though because I was a warrior in 99 and I don't think I hit 30 until Luclin lol due to altaholism