Questions about Necromancers and Faction relations

[paladin1118]

Hello, I use to play on official EQ a long time ago, like most everyone else here did, I imagine. I recently started playing EQ on this server a while back with a friend who wanted to experience what classic EQ was like. I think my friend was busy playing Ultima Online or something back in 1999 so he missed out on EQ completely.

So far, this server has been a great experience for both of us... it's an amazing thing to be able to revisit classic EQ again but what I think is even more amazing is to have another chance to show classic EQ to those who missed out on it the first time.

Anyway, my friend and I have been trying to decide which classes in EQ work best together for duoing... we've decided it's probably Necro and Druid. However, these are opposite aligned classes which have to use different cities usually.

The only way I can see to make this a very easy partnership is to make a human necromancer and hope they aren't KOS in as many places as most other race's Necromancers are. Yes, I know its not a big deal for us to just go to separate cities when neccessary but we would like to avoid that if possible.

Ideally, I would like to play an Iksar Necro but I know those are the toughest to play since they're KOS everywhere outside of Cabilis and getting them outside of Kunark without a port is very tedious. We're also new to the server, don't have a lot of coin yet and don't really know any nice high level druids or wizards who would want to port a low level Necro around. So... I'm thinking the Iksar Necro wouldn't be a very practical choice, unfortunately.

Anyway, here are my questions:
1. Can Iksar Necro's find any Necro trainers they can use anywhere outside of Kunark? If so, where/who?
2. Are human Necro's started in Freeport KOS to any npc's in Freeport?
3. Are human Necro's KOS in Kelethin?
4. Are Erudite Necro's KOS in Freeport?
5. Can Erudite Necro's use Freeport Necro trainers?
6. Are Erudite Necro's KOS in Kelethin?
7. Can Dark Elf Necro's use Freeport Necro trainers?

By the way, I'm not really interested in playing a gnome necromancer. I think my preferred race choices are, in order of most preferred to least: Iksar, Erudite, Dark Elf, Human.

I know human Necro is probably the best choice for duoing with a druid, without having to run way far out of my way every time I need to train and get spells. As far as selling stuff and getting food and water goes, my druid friend is willing to help me out with that.

Thank you for your time. Any help or advice that can be offered would be greatly appreciated. I am also open to other class combo recommendations that duo well together without the need for a larger group, besides Necro/Druid.

[Autumnbow]

Don't let a silly thing like faction prevent you from playing the character you want :P

I think you can use Freeport necro trainers as an iksar, and with a druid partner (self ports at level 19), you could always just give him the money to buy your spells for you.

[Kika Maslyaka]

Anyway, here are my questions:
1. Can Iksar Necro's find any Necro trainers they can use anywhere outside of Kunark? If so, where/who?
2. Are human Necro's started in Freeport KOS to any npc's in Freeport?
3. Are human Necro's KOS in Kelethin?
4. Are Erudite Necro's KOS in Freeport?
5. Can Erudite Necro's use Freeport Necro trainers?
6. Are Erudite Necro's KOS in Kelethin?
7. Can Dark Elf Necro's use Freeport Necro trainers?.

theoretically - you can obtain 99% of all factions in game. Question is how much effort it would take.

1. Not without giant faction work. Evil guys hard to get faction with. But Heretics of Paineel are the easiest - slaughter Erudin guards and paladins.

2. To some. Notable paladins and cleric, and but overall its your most welcoming city.

3. Oh yeah

4. Most definitely

5. I know Erudite necros apprehensive to Qeynos Necros. Not sure about FP

6. Most definitely

7. Yes. DE Necros practically OWN FP necros - they are allies.

Overall DE/Human necro of Innoruk have the most freedom moving around more popular areas. Erudite necros can train in Qeynos catacombs but thats about it.

[Silverain]

My monk is Iksar, and is warmly in Kelethin, Kaladim and Felwithe for the most part. I can buy/sell and bank with sneak in Kelethin, and without it in Kaladim. I went to CB at 6, and was turning in belts by like 9. If you truly wish to stay Iksar Nec, don't let faction stop you. Look up Gynk or Elari in game, I can port you to wherever you need and bind you. No charge. Welcome to the server.

[HeallunRumblebelly]

Shared wolf form from druids negates a lot of faction problems. Freport as said before is probably your best bet.

[Swish]

Everything becomes irrelevant at L34 with "Call of Bones".

Many faction problems (though probably not all) go away. My iksar necro can visit/bank in most places without a problem in skellie form.

[Kika Maslyaka]

which is a bug.
skeleton form not suppose to give faction adjustments

[Silverain]

Yes but you also had a good aligned class.

Necromancers start off with a HUGE chip off faction, solely for their class. Then you add in the racial deduction, necros have a bit more faction to work up than a monk.

You may be right that necs have a harder time, however after only 3 lvls as a monk I could, and CB can definitely take you higher than lvl 9 and turning in belts never gets old even when the exp is stale. CB could technically take you to 20, with some patience, and if race means that much, the work is small by comparison.

[Silverain]

Outside of buyin basic provisions and a bank, you're right. Would still need someone to spell shop, but as a monk I also had to take the firepots to Cab everytime I wanted to train until 17, then I still had to go to FP. Sometimes, the work is worth it to play what you like.

[Growlers]

Iksar necro can train in FP underground without faction work, just cannot buy from merchants down there. I would suggest turning in light stones/ greater lightstones to Smyth at DE bandit camp in SRo for Neriak faction. You will be able to bank there pretty quick. No negatives hits, and nice plat too!

[Swish]

Some vendors still sell to you as well. If you end up doing spectres in Feerott between 35-50 (not so sure about the gypsies in Oasis)... the ogre vendors except the food/drink guy sell to you without skellie form on, or at least they do to an iksar :)

[Autotune]

think my erudite necro is cool in woodcity, I know he was cool with the halfling town. Only city that didn't like me was high elf.

Also, after sundawg edited with factions, DE necro guild turned KoS on me, but the cleric guild still liked me.

[Swish]

Yeah a lot of the time if the guards are okay with you its still a good idea to /con the banker just to be sure you can bank safely. Kelethin is a great example of being able to walk around freely but getting wtfpwnd by the banker who is on a seperate faction (Felwithe banker on the other hand is okay).

If you're venturing into any city just steer clear of as many guilds as possible, and never underestimate the power of FD banking if you can pull it off :)

[paladin1118]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've decided I'll probably start an Iksar Necromancer after all.

If I remember correctly, the only thing thats really necessary to get from class trainers for a mage-type class is meditate anyway... and they get access to that around level 4 right? So I can level up around Cabilis just enough to get meditate learned and then leave and not have to come back anytime soon.

I figure I can get spells from the Necro guild in freeport either way, if I can't buy them myself, a level 1 human necro always can and then trade them to me. Food/water and everything else is easy enough to come by with another player's help or by just using alts I guess. So there's really no need to return to Cabilis except for training. I guess it just took me a while to remember all this lol... it's been a long time. I did play an iksar necro on official EQ for a couple years.





theoretically - you can obtain 99% of all factions in game. Question is how much effort it would take.

1. Not without giant faction work. Evil guys hard to get faction with. But Heretics of Paineel are the easiest - slaughter Erudin guards and paladins.

2. To some. Notable paladins and cleric, and but overall its your most welcoming city.

3. Oh yeah

4. Most definitely

5. I know Erudite necros apprehensive to Qeynos Necros. Not sure about FP

6. Most definitely

7. Yes. DE Necros practically OWN FP necros - they are allies.

Overall DE/Human necro of Innoruk have the most freedom moving around more popular areas. Erudite necros can train in Qeynos catacombs but thats about it.

Thanks, Kika, for answering my questions.


My monk is Iksar, and is warmly in Kelethin, Kaladim and Felwithe for the most part. I can buy/sell and bank with sneak in Kelethin, and without it in Kaladim. I went to CB at 6, and was turning in belts by like 9. If you truly wish to stay Iksar Nec, don't let faction stop you. Look up Gynk or Elari in game, I can port you to wherever you need and bind you. No charge. Welcome to the server.


Thanks for the port offer, Silverain, I'll definitely keep it in mind. Not exactly sure when me and my friend will be starting this duo though. We've got busy again with real life recently. We're definitely going to try this eventually though.

[aresprophet]

Faction is important for only a few things, so worrying about it isn't always necessary. In order of importance you need it for:

-Selling
-Banking
-Buying spells
-Training

A quick summary of how important each of these is, how hard it is to overcome negative factions, etc:

TRAINING: The least important. You essentially need to train at 8, 20, and 22 as a Necro. You may also want to make a big investment in training points in Research right around 34, but this is optional. Don't sweat it too much. Buying necro spells from a researcher is cheaper than buying enough points to trivialize your 49 spells (at least at my prices) and you can typically pay for combines as well if you're nice about it. As an Iksar you should be able to get to 20 in Kurn's tower faster than anywhere else in the game, so you can leave Kunark with all your necessary skills. Other races should be able to train in either Qeynos or Freeport without problems, depending. Again, don't sweat this too much because after 22 it's basically irrelevant.

SPELLS: Important, but not terribly difficult to overcome. Iksar have the worst time of this and without significant faction work will have to make frequent trips back to Cabilis. Dark Elves and Humans have it pretty easy as both Neriak and Freeport are easy to get to. One thing you can do if you have a little excess plat (and as a soloing necro you should) is buy an expensive gem (such as a Sapphire) with CHA gear on, make a mule character with a bunch of CHA points, and use it to buy your spells by drop-transferring. It's not elegant, but I did this in Cabilis on my necro for one spell level and it didn't take more than 20 minutes. Cost me less than 20pp extra.

BANKING: a big deal, but you can overcome this fairly easily. My Dark Elf necro is KOS in North Freeport, and he banks there all the time. All you need is a Circlet of Shadow (and a high enough Abjuration skill that FD won't fizzle a bunch). You invis behind the bankers out of LOS of the guards, FD, then bank. You use the CoS immediately after standing and avoid aggro. Simple as that. I've banked in Rivervale, NFP, Cabilis, and Felwithe using this method without trouble.

SELLING: as a necro you'll need vendors a lot. Whether you're hunting Halfling guards, High Elf guards, spectres, seafuries, or any other lucrative camps you'll need to offload your loot a lot to keep the plat rolling in alongside the exp. One overlooked asset you have is Call of Bones; the skeleton illusion can raise your faction substantially. As a Dark Elf I could sell to the vendors in Misty Thicket using CoB, then use the above banking trick to bank my plat. In some places this won't be enough, and you'll need to know what's your closest vendor option in a given place. Druid ring vendors are always indifferent so they're a great choice, but certain druid rings (such as NK) are totally unsafe and others (such as WC) are a little dangerous but possible to use anyway. Gypsies in Oasis will sell to you as well. Once you hit 50 and get an OT hammer (using your undead charm to skip the tedium of farming braids) you can use the simple expedient of binding near your camp, hammering out on a mob, and gating back. Not ideal for camps where you get loaded up on loot quickly, but it's a workaround. I have also used the drop-transfer trick outlined above for spell purchases to sell fine steel weapons when killing guards. Drop a couple backpacks full of weapons to a CHA-loaded mule, sell the weapons, and once you've got enough plat convert it to gems (which have a low variance between purchase and sell values). Overall though you need to consider your nearest selling point when choosing a camp spot, particularly if it's a high-volume loot camp. Otherwise you waste a lot of time and bone chips.

Faction work can alleviate some of these issues, but I found very few instances where I could work up faction with less cost and effort than it'd take to just work around the problem. Once you're 50+ with a CoS and an OT hammer you just don't have to worry about it as much. On the grind up to that, just be smart about where you hunt and you'll rake in a ton of cash.

[maximum]

Add Halloween 2012 Event to the wiki article: http://wiki.project1999.org/GM_Event Add screenshots and loot. Thanks!

[Conky]

Iksar necro is not too bad if your patient, kill lots of orcs for knights of truth faction, hand in belts in wolf form for guards, do the reby whisker quest around 150 times, takes 1min to do, on a different character and gives whiskers to your necro to turn in. So after that you can bank, buy/sell and walk around freely in freeport just avoid bards guild, warrior guild and caster guild and to buy spells just make a level 1 human necro park him by the vendors in the tunnel, go to where he his, drop a bag with gems, log out and back in with human, sell gems , buy spells, drop bag as you log out and back in with main and you have spells. Im doing it again with my iksar shaman its not so bad , also check out the iksar faction guide.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030325235327/http://www.twenkill.net/anezka/Factions.html