Advice needed - how to gain traction as a truly new player?

[trollitc]

I've been struggling with how to word this post so that people don't get the wrong idea. I really enjoy this game, and I've met some fantastic people on the server. I'm not looking for handouts or free stuff, but some actual advice. So here goes.

My friend and I are just starting out on project 1999. Our highest level characters are 5th level. We don't have a mountain of plat from older characters or guildies we're sitting on.

I'm searching my memories from back in '99 and trying to remember just how long it took then to level up and start acquiring cool stuff. What should we be expecting with our characters?

We're currently in EC with occasional forays into WC and we're leveling at the rate of about one level ever 4-5 hours.

We've decided to play our characters (druid and monk) as a little group of our own. We're not opposed to grouping with others but we're not going to log on with these particular toons without each other so that they'll stay roughly equal in level.

What can we do to advance a little faster? I don't mind the grind that much, and I'm having fun in EC but a level every 4 hours, at the rate we can play, has me wondering if I'll ever get past level 25.

What would you all suggest? Or is it just a case of buckling down and grinding away? If that's it, that's fine. I'm curious though, how did you all get where you are? I see so many lower level characters sporting amazing equipment, and people selling/buying items for 50k PP+. Yesterday evening we watched a 5th level character soloing the griffin in EC, which was fun to watch but something we couldn't do at this time.

Have you all (by this I mean -the folks with riches/items/etc) been on 1999 since the beginning? Are you all guild members?

Thanks!

[SCB]

I started my character on this server and knew no one. Had no plat, no higher-level items, etc. I now have one of those twins you're talking about (maybe not that impressive, though!). Money comes as you level - no need to rush it. Enjoy the experience and just have fun with your buddy, imo. Explore a bit, check out different dungeons. Trying to race to 60 is a horrible, horrible idea, imo.

Money comes when you get a big drop in a dungeon. No need to rush that drop as long as you have cash for spells and necessities. All the gear you could possibly need to level you can get on your own, and when it comes time to get the really nice stuff you'll have a guild, or a friends list, or a long afternoon in KC to get it.

Don't feel like you can't participate because there are so many twinked-up low level characters. Use them to make the harder parts of being a low level easy and just have fun with it. This worked out extremely well for me, and I wouldn't go back and do it any other way if I had the option.

Edit: If a level every 4 hours is daunting, please understand that it only gets (much) slower down the road. Reaching max level isn't super important to having fun in EQ. The adventure, the journey, is the fun.

[Eldaran]

A lot of high level people will just give treasures away because they are worthless to them at their level. I've received many gifts on different characters. Not all people wearing awesome gear at low levels were twinked from a high level that they own. My highest character on this server is 14 and it's taken me roughly 35 hours to get there on my /played. I prefer leveling in Crushbone until around 15 at least because of the 50% bonus to xp. EC can be good when you can get a full group for Orc camps.

[Hitchens]

Or is it just a case of buckling down and grinding away?

Pretty much. Starting out fresh is rough, but it gets easier with levels. Heck, I was wearing leather stuff I looted off Orcs in South Ro until about level 45.

[trollitc]

Thanks for the responses!

There's a 50% XP bonus in Crushbone? Are there other zones like this? Why aren't they packed full of shoulder to shoulder paladins and shadowknights?

[Mojoz_Mon]

Well one thing is ya most of those uber twinks are guilded.. Another thing i kinda look at the the xp mod. in the zone places like EC and super public zones you get less xp in.. With a druid and monk you should have no problems going to places like Upper Guk, Unrest... So on and so on.. One big thing I did to get cash starting out is collect up things like pelts, silks, bone chips and such peeps always buying them in EC, and find camps that drop things like Bronze weapons, and good vendor fodder... First couple of levels are always kinda tough specially if you don't got 50kpp to dump into i lol... I not sure if this will help you out at all but just a few suggestions and you can toss me a PM on this I would be glad to run my cleric / lower lvl druid over and help you guys out!

[trollitc]

Wow! Here's the single biggest take away piece of advice I've gleaned from this thread.

http://wiki.project1999.org/index.php/Recommended_Levels_and_ZEM_List - different zones have different XP modifiers.

Serves me right for not reading that wiki post earlier! But damn, this will make a hell of a lot of a difference!

[Hitchens]

Thanks for the responses!

There's a 50% XP bonus in Crushbone? Are there other zones like this? Why aren't they packed full of shoulder to shoulder paladins and shadowknights?

SKs, and evil races in general, typically avoid Crushbone due to the faction hits to Indigo Brotherhood.

[snoopiku]

Sometimes you just have to get lucky. I originally made a dwarf paladin and some nice, higher level warrior, gifted me a full set of banded. I collected all the cloth, rusty weapons, anything that dropped and sold it. I made about 20pp in the first few levels.

Then I made a barb shaman. Helped some guy with a transfer in front of Halas and he hooked me up with about 60pp and ring, as well as a couple backpacks full of spells.

Got my shaman to 16 (about a day and a half of playing time) and realized I wanted to play a more melee friendly character. Made a warrior and transfered all the banded off my paladin and all the gear I had accumulated off my Shaman (which included a nice club, some gloves, belt, shield, and rings). Now my warrior has a small selection of weapons to choose from, some decent armor, and some pp left over to now save for some better items.

He's level 18 now, probably 30 hours played, but the grind is just a lot of fun, especially playing a character you enjoy. So, yea, you have to work at it, but in the end, its worth it.

[cavtroop]

Heyeveryone, I'm the monk buddy he referenced. I think the biggest thing is that we've spent 100% of our time in EC/WC - didnt realize there was an XP penalty for playing there. We're going to head off to someplace with bette XP - probably CB if we can get a port for cheap. That should make a BIG difference - going from 75% to 150% would have meant 2 or 3 more levels by now!

Thanks for all the tips - this is a great server. Run into a ton of very friendly people so far, and having a blast!

[Danyelle]

SKs, and evil races in general, typically avoid Crushbone due to the faction hits to Indigo Brotherhood.

I'm a Dark Elf and I grinded the hell out of CB. But then again I also took the time and went out of my way (and in fact am still working on this) to raise my faction with the "good" races and plan on going back to Neriak, Grobb, and Oggok and killing later. So I suppose I don't count lol.

I can say that unless you're a Dark Elf warrior though don't worry about killing in Crushbone unless you REALLY want to maintain that faction. Reason being, Indigo Brotherhood, near as I can tell, only contains the Dark Elves in the Warrior's guild. There may be a straggler NPC or two but I have yet to run into one. The caster's guilds are The Spurned, the Necro guild is The Dead, and the guards all fall under Dreadguard Inner and Dreadguard Outer. Unless you're a warrior, or need to make forays into the Neriak Arena, killing in Crushbone won't affect you that much.

It WILL kill that faction fast though. From my starting point of, I wanna say, Amiable I went to max KoS in under 20 minutes.

[Hitchens]

Grobb, and Oggok

I am appalled!

[trollitc]

My wife totally thinks this game is not what it is. Mostly because she hears me talking to others about mobs and grinding an awful lot.

I believe we'll be packing up and heading to CB for some much needed XP. Thanks again to everyone! Please if you have more to say, do so! It's been so long since I've really played EQ - I'm still learning (or re-learning) a ton!

[Splorf22]

My rule of thumb is that gaining a level in EQ will require about 5 hours of XP time with a good group - of course that does not include questing, travel, getting trained and dying, corpse recovery, playing with 3 rangers in the group, or the bonus "hell" levels which include every level 51-60, etc. I believe my Magician on live had something like 30 days played when he hit 50, and my enchanter had more like 12-15. To like EQ, you have to be very goal oriented and somewhat masochistic.

That said:

I would echo what the previous posters have said. Go read the ZEM list. Both Blackburrow and Crushbone will level you up better than EC I think, and after that it's all about Guktop and Unrest. After that it's a bit harder to find a zone with a great ZEM unless you can drag people out to Kaesora.

You will level a LOT faster now than I did a year ago because you can group with ubertwinks (see Clever's thread where he plans to buy a Cloak of Flames for his L1 monk) plus periodically people will come by and throw buffs on you which also helps a lot.

Generally speaking the leveling zones are a lot less crowded than they were a year ago.

Finally, what are you going to do when you get to high level anyway? If you get to 50+ and want high end gear of the type IB is preparing to RMT, you have to join a raiding guild, sign up your cell phone, and jump out of bed at 5AM to go kill mobs before the other guild (currently TMO and VD are guilds 1 and 1A on the server at doing this). It's basically a second job. Your alternative is to join a second tier guild like BDA or Taken, which is fun but you'll never even see the endgame content. So the high end game is kinda rough on this server.

[Grozmok]

Your problem is actually really easy to solve. I can do it in three words or less:

Play the game.

http://hvstatic6.hypervocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/winning-charlie1.jpg

[Orruar]

We've decided to play our characters (druid and monk) as a little group of our own. We're not opposed to grouping with others but we're not going to log on with these particular toons without each other so that they'll stay roughly equal in level.


Two boxer

Burn the witch!

[trollitc]

Two boxer

Burn the witch!

Scott and I had a bet as to how long it would take someone to say the TB words.

It took a lot longer than we had thought!

[fadetree]

Well, I'm in qeynos hills area. Having a fun time, but haven't really met a lot of people nice or otherwise yet. Most people don't have anything to say, I wave and if no response move on. The gnoll tooth quest from blackburrow is really amazing for exp, and IIRC there is a similar crushbone belt quest, so if you get to CB don't forget that.

Don't hate me, but I am in NEARLY FULL CLOTH armor and I upgraded my horribly crappy weapon for a terribly crappy one. I hope someday to get a merely crappy one, but I'm probably dreaming. ;)

[Messianic]

EQ is a very raw, unrefined game. Levels 5-10 for some classes in some situations is harder than levels 30-35, 35-40, 40-45, etc (partially because some classes aren't developed at all until their teens, Shamans really aren't fleshed out as a class at all until 24...).

I leveled once every 1 or two hours depending how focused I was in my 30s straight through 51 on my wizard. My necro was a very consistent one level per hour except for hell levels, even in his 40s (51-60 changes this paradigm, although 51/52/53 are really easy compared to 54+).

But there are some levels where my wizard took 4-5 hours - even in the 20s (because level 20 doesn't bring a new, more efficient nuke for wizards - crappy ability design from the start).

A big part is the knowledge gap. Some places are simply easier to level at for specific classes, and you have to know ZEMs (as has been mentioned), etc. Blackburrow is fantastic - I argue BB gnoll teeth + diseased pelt quests are better than Crushbone, but Crushbone always has a soft spot in my heart because it's where I cut my teeth (first dungeon I ever entered). Both are great locations.

Some levels are simply a slog to grind through - some are awesome and a breeze. But that's EQ :)

[Greegon]

I started out naked on this server as well like some others. After 2 years of playing I eventually made the switch from rags to riches but it certainly takes hard work. Also received lots of help from people as a newb so I would be expecting some as well, lots of cool people on p99. Of course my real suggestion would be going to over to red99, especially if you have a RL partner to play with!

[Alex]

Red99 is a bloated, decaying corpse. Check out it's population any time of the day to confirm this yourself, or take a stroll on over to their forums and watch the shit fly.

[Messianic]

Red99 is a bloated, decaying corpse. Check out it's population any time of the day to confirm this yourself, or take a stroll on over to their forums and watch the shit fly.

It's true. Once it gets to one guild, you know the server's pretty much dead.

[Craigmandu]

Just be smart as you level and you can make some cash.....never sell silk, spiderling silk, high quality bear, grizzly hides to merchants....(I made an easy 150pp off a few stacks of silk coming out of nektulos forest on my DE necro)...

If you are worried about your armor (other than crappy drop cloth for the monk, raw hide for the druid), then get your tailoring up with that silk instead of selling it and make cured silk (takes some plat to get the brewing high enough)...doesn't take too long.

The biggest thing you need as a monk is weapons...expect to spend at least 1-200pp to get what you need...that's just the way it is. I killed alot of bears/spiders to get the silk/pelts needed to sell to players to buy what I needed.

[Huddaan]

The wiki has some useful guides.

http://wiki.project1999.org/index.php/Ultimate_Leveling_While_Making_Money_Guide

[Galaa]

I started in this server with zero friends and no plat, no hand downs, nothing.

I'm currently level 26 druid and I'm still using a cracked staff which I gotten off a level 1 skeleton, and I'm wearing the tattered leather armor (full suit) from the CB belt quests. When I was level 19,I was so poor that I can't buy a single level 19 spell, and had to farm low level mobs to earn plats to buy them.

I'm possibly the worst geared level 26 character in the server right now lol however I have no trouble levelling despite my gears though.

So don bother about gears too much. Unless u r a tank class, gears are the least of ur problems.

[Fultun]

Heyeveryone, I'm the monk buddy he referenced. I think the biggest thing is that we've spent 100% of our time in EC/WC - didnt realize there was an XP penalty for playing there.


Zones don't have an XP penalty. But some have an XP bonus.

[Relikk]

It may be a penalty outright but isn't that what 75% xp in the zone list means? You get 75% of the xp that you should get compared to a zone at 100% xp which I assume means what we would label as "regular" or "normal" experience?

[Messianic]

Zones don't have an XP penalty. But some have an XP bonus.

No, actually some zones were created with a penalty (i.e. below some set average). Maybe you're just setting the baseline at the lowest ZEM value - but Lake of Ill Omen and TD specifically had exp ZEM's below nearly every other zone. Dunno why it was made that way, but it was.

If you want to say they are merely the baseline and noob zones and cities get ~25% bonus, that's fine, but it's just semantics. They might as well be penalties.

It may be a penalty outright but isn't that what 75% xp in the zone list means? You get 75% of the xp that you should get compared to a zone at 100% xp which I assume means what we would label as "regular" or "normal" experience?

If you're using this: http://wiki.project1999.org/index.php/Recommended_Levels_and_ZEM_List

Remember that 75 is considered the baseline in that setup (note that LoIO is valued at 60).

[Cone]

when you both reach around lvl 10, go camp sisters in lfay. you should be ableto make enough plat to twink yourself a bit, thats what me and my bud did

[Messianic]

when you both reach around lvl 10, go camp sisters in lfay. you should be ableto make enough plat to twink yourself a bit, thats what me and my bud did

If you can actually get the camp (just about everyone knows about it), this is a great alternative :)

Two of the sisters can be single pulled without lull/harmony - the other two you have to break up by killing them both. It's not hard either way - they're rogue mobs, so they have lower hps and die quickly. Just don't turn your back to them.

[eqravenprince]

I wouldn't get too caught up in ZEM's. Adventure, try new zones. You'll find your leveling without it seeming like a grind.

Crushbone and Blackburrow are good choices. Dungeons I would also check out Najena, Befallen, Upper Guk, and Qeynos Catacombs. I believe newbie zones have an experience bonus, some have higher level mobs that would be good levels 5+, check out Feerrot Lizards and Misty Thicket past the wall and Butcherblock mountains.

Other dungeons I'm not sure what level they are, but worth checking out after a few more levels would be Runnyeye, Permafrost, Unrest and if you really want to go where no one has gone before Kerra Isle.

I don't want to tell you to avoid outdoor zones. Sometimes it's fun to try them out for the hell of it and adventure. Outdoor zones are usually less stressful in my experience.

[timoris]

I've been struggling with how to word this post so that people don't get the wrong idea. I really enjoy this game, and I've met some fantastic people on the server. I'm not looking for handouts or free stuff, but some actual advice. So here goes.

My friend and I are just starting out on project 1999. Our highest level characters are 5th level. We don't have a mountain of plat from older characters or guildies we're sitting on.

I'm searching my memories from back in '99 and trying to remember just how long it took then to level up and start acquiring cool stuff. What should we be expecting with our characters?

We're currently in EC with occasional forays into WC and we're leveling at the rate of about one level ever 4-5 hours.

We've decided to play our characters (druid and monk) as a little group of our own. We're not opposed to grouping with others but we're not going to log on with these particular toons without each other so that they'll stay roughly equal in level.

What can we do to advance a little faster? I don't mind the grind that much, and I'm having fun in EC but a level every 4 hours, at the rate we can play, has me wondering if I'll ever get past level 25.

What would you all suggest? Or is it just a case of buckling down and grinding away? If that's it, that's fine. I'm curious though, how did you all get where you are? I see so many lower level characters sporting amazing equipment, and people selling/buying items for 50k PP+. Yesterday evening we watched a 5th level character soloing the griffin in EC, which was fun to watch but something we couldn't do at this time.

Have you all (by this I mean -the folks with riches/items/etc) been on 1999 since the beginning? Are you all guild members?

Thanks!

There aren't many "new" players joining the server at this time. A lot of lower level players are usually 3rd/4th/5th twinks of higher level players. The people trading items are 50kpp+ are raiders and players who farmed a whole lot of manastones and items that no longer drop before these items were removed from the game.

[cavtroop]

There aren't many "new" players joining the server at this time. A lot of lower level players are usually 3rd/4th/5th twinks of higher level players. The people trading items are 50kpp+ are raiders and players who farmed a whole lot of manastones and items that no longer drop before these items were removed from the game.

I think this is primarily the cause of what we (as new low level players) are seeing. There is little to no market for lower level gear and equipment, as most everyone is a twink of some sort, or being helped along by a much higher level player. So players don't bother auctioning off the lower level gear - they either dump it or sell it to a vendor as it isn't worth their time.

Still having fun, just trying to figure out the server dynamics!

[Plyssken]

True to some extent. Don't be afraid to to look around in EC though.
I picked up a pretty decent necro earring for 85 plat and have picked up under 100plat piece upgrades here and there.

There's still a pretty good spectrum. You'll find "newbie super twinks" (Sorry old jokes, we had a couple of twinks called that once) but you'll also find folks like me scratching thru levels & celebrating every piece we upgrade from our handmade raw silk.

On the flip side when you pick up a group in a real camp (like Upper Guk) you have a decent chance of getting the loot if you actually need it. You'll also stumble upon those cool high levelers who see you killing something. Look at your equipment and hand you upgrades they happen to have in their inventory and were going to sell to vendors anyways ;-)

[Grozmok]

I love the low and mid level gear prices. It allows me to gear up and twink for peanuts.

[Plyssken]

I wouldn't get too caught up in ZEM's. Adventure, try new zones. You'll find your leveling without it seeming like a grind.

Crushbone and Blackburrow are good choices. Dungeons I would also check out Najena, Befallen, Upper Guk, and Qeynos Catacombs. I believe newbie zones have an experience bonus, some have higher level mobs that would be good levels 5+, check out Feerrot Lizards and Misty Thicket past the wall and Butcherblock mountains.

Other dungeons I'm not sure what level they are, but worth checking out after a few more levels would be Runnyeye, Permafrost, Unrest and if you really want to go where no one has gone before Kerra Isle.

I don't want to tell you to avoid outdoor zones. Sometimes it's fun to try them out for the hell of it and adventure. Outdoor zones are usually less stressful in my experience.
Yeah, I'm loving Lavastorm I even found a little mini boss spawning area. I'm usually the only one pulling there and high levelers come by going to Sol B & I occasionally get ninjabuffs :-D

I liked the undead monolith in No Ro a couple levels previously right by the beach so I could fish in between pulls until my pole broke. :-P