New Druid Advice from the experts

[rhold]

The camp is brutal solo. The 30 second spawn time means you have to constantly be attentive because the courier and all placeholders spawn already walking. If you are looking away from the game for 10 seconds after spawn, the mob could easily blend in to all the other wandering mobs. There is zero AFKing or you will have to go back through the process of finding and killing the PHer. Probably the biggest reason it's still 6K

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The data is the self reported chart on the ring page. I feel it is more accurate than what you think it might be.

There's 2 mobs dropping SCHW in the same camp and it is the common drop from at least 1 of them and not even the main reason people do that camp, they rot all the time. Also it is a 22% haste item which is kind of unimpressive on a top heavy server. I gave a pair to all my alts and I sold a dozen of them when I did 56-58 there.

It is on a 32mins timer, a good chanter can kill all 4 named ph in like 5-10 mins and afk 20 mins. Goblin you have to kill 120 mobs per hour and you can't go take a piss without risking having to start over. I'm not sure why you're drawing any sort of parallels with both camp, I'd pick frenzy any day over gobby ring.

And it is more of a 40+ camp if you want to have any sort of efficiency doing it but it is possible much lower.

Price data tends to be more accurate, because the entire playerbase interacts with the market. If people can make a quick 6k solo, they will. People will undercut prices to get a quick sale too, which is one way prices go down. If you don't see undercutting, that is usually due to a lack of supply. Nobody needs to undercut with low supply, because you don't have a bunch of Goblin Rings being auctioned at the same time.

The problem with wiki data is it is self reported by the small faction of the playerbase that edits the wiki. The data is probably skewed towards people who get rings, because you can brag about it on the wiki. There isn't much incentive to post if you never got a ring.

Using data created by the entire playerbase is probably more reliable than a small fraction of the playerbase self reporting with a potential skew.

SCHW is a good example of price drop due to supply because even top heavy servers need the cheaper haste items. When you have 10 alts, you don't usually spend 15k on a seahorse belt for each of them. You buy SCHWs for some of them. The point is that FBSS costs more, but it is generally inferior to SCHW. Why does FBSS cost more? Because SCHW is so common it rots. Nobody is going to pay FBSS prices for an item that rots. So you have a scenario where a generally inferior item that does the same thing (FBSS) costs more because of lower supply compared to the superior alternative (SCHW).

Now if you still think SCHW is a bad example, just look at Fungi Tunic. That is probably the most popular and sought after item in P99. It's usuable by 10 classes, and everyone wants multiple copies.

If Fungi Tunic dropped by 20-25k over 9 years, why did the Goblin Ring price barely move? Goblin Ring is soloable by a level 20, it has a fast respawn, and it sells for 6k. Every low level caster would be camping the Goblin Ring and getting multiple copies if it wasn't that rare. The Goblin Ring price would go down due to supply like most items on P99. That is the trend, prices go down on most items as the server ages due to a high supply and low demand. If the price remains the same for years, that is usually due to low supply keeping the prices up.

[bcbrown]

Best argument against taking EC prices as being economically rational is the Driftwood Treasure Chest. Twice the price of a tink bag while being worse, while the tink bag is vendor-purchasable and the chest is a motherfucker of a camp.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Best argument against taking EC prices as being economically rational is the Driftwood Treasure Chest. Twice the price of a tink bag while being worse, while the tink bag is vendor-purchasable and the chest is a motherfucker of a camp.

The bag market does have some nuance to it funnily enough. Some people will pay more for a bag that looks unique, because they hate having multiple bags with the same graphic. They'll buy 1 Tink Bag, 1 Driftwood Chest, 1 Kavruul`s Mystic Pouch, etc. for 8 unique bag graphics, even if the bag itself wasn't worth the plat objectively speaking. Driftwood Treasure Chest has it's higher price due to rarity and unique graphic. If it looked like a Tink Bag, people wouldn't care about it.

The P99 markets are quite consistent. Most items with high supply go down in price over time. There are always exceptions, but even Fungi Tunic isn't immune to supply and demand. If Goblin Ring supply was high like Loramin suggests, it's price would have gone down as well over the past 9 years. Since the price hasn't gone down, that indicates supply is low (i.e. Goblin Ring is rare).

[bcbrown]

Here's all the criticisms I think are legitimate of the idea of spending a bunch of levels in LoIO hoping to get a ring while XPing:

It sucks to get to. Practically speaking, you'll have to take a boat ride to get there, because you're too low level to safely run there from any port location, so that's a minor hassle. And then the run to LoIO from FV is a pain with all those spiders in the way in FV. They're red and they can see invis and root you. If you go there before level 19 you won't have any ports, so either you can bind at FV and have to run that gauntlet every time you gate, or you can bind near the camp and hope you can level to 19 before you need to vendor.

It'll be a bitch to find the placeholder. You don't get track until 20 and I don't think you'll get it to a usable level for several levels at least - mobs might be greening out by then. Even if you do find the placeholder and find the spawn point, you're not going to be able to sustain a 30s/mob kill rate while they're blue. Nukes and dots certainly won't be sustainable. Your best bet might be treeform + thorns but that might need good AC to work, and you'll need to snare every mob to keep them from fleeing out of melee range - even then if you're using a 1h weapon often times they'll get pushed out of melee range.

If you're gonna try to keep a charm pet against the 30s spawn point, it'll probably get beat down pretty quickly and won't last a few minutes, if it doesn't break before then. Even if the pet was invulnerable I'm not sure you could med enough to keep ahead of the charm breaks - plus you'll be taking a couple hits every charm break.

No matter melee or charm, you'll need to fight the ph on or near the spawn point, and I think they all have plenty of pathers around so you'll have to handle a constant stream of adds. And if you want to rely on gate as an escape hatch you'll have to consider your bind point, the run from FV through the spiders, and when you get self ports.

I still think it's a good suggestion and I'd like to come back and level here - I do remember spending a little time here on my first druid. I think the play is to charm animals and pull pathers from around where the spawn points are - maybe you get lucky and you kill a ph and spawn a courier and that courier has the rare drop.

But the primary reason you're unlikely to come away with a ring after leveling there isn't because of how rare the drop is - it's because you can't sustain holding down a spawn point while it's blue while solo.

Perhaps what I'm most curious about is what the XP is like as an xp-green camp. The bigger level differential might make it more sustainable and the 30s respawn rate might give really good xp overall. But I think you'd still have to be pretty lucky to pin down a spawn point and PH.

[Goregasmic]

Yeah that's the part that is tricky, ph will be hard to find around level 20 as there's a dozen possible PH and probably 30+ mob in the area. Without AE you basically have to hope there's already a courier up or just kill random stuff and hope you get a courier eventually but you probably won't get many that way and it is about a 3% drop rate.

I was 44 when I did it, not sure how the exp is around there. Worth a shot if it is decent but I'd bolt the second it slows down and come back in the late 30s or even 40s.

Considering there's 6+ actual PH, I wonder if the best way to farm it would be bard swarming everything or have a wizard just gflux everything and PBAE every 30 sec.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I'll trust the markets. If Goblin Ring wasn't rare, higher level druids with track would have gotten good at the camp and min/maxed it for quick cash, especially on Blue before Green came out when you had 1000+ players online at the same time. People didn't leave good cash camps unattended with that many players online, especially Druid camps since Druids can port around checking for open camps.

Druids got good at Forager Cycle and Peggi Cloak as well. Both of those are camps require a lot of tracking and running around too.

Ceremonial Iksar Chestplate (from forager cycle) went from around 15k in 2015 to 5k now on Blue:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...sar+chestplate

Remember that Goblin Ring was still 6k when Pre-Nerf Circlet of Shadow was selling for 3.5k in 2015:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...Circlet+Shadow

Only two classes were using Goblin Ring for Charm at the time, yet the price didn't go down on Goblin Ring even temporarily. Necros picked up a Pre-Nerf Circlet of Shadow for their invis clickie back then since it was cheap.

Droppable items do not maintain their price for 9 years for no reason, especially items that could be heavily camped on Blue years before Green came out.

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by loramin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How long will it take a low-level Druid (without a ring) to level from 17-22 ... ten hours? The wiki reports list nine players who got their ring in under ten hours, and the majority got it in five hours or less. The less lucky ones needed 6, 8.5, 10.5, 18, or 50+ (!) hours, and there are also reports (all ten hours or less) where no ring was acquired.

The right thing to do would be to put all those reports into a table and do some math ... although that would still be flawed, because some reports are for single spawn points, and some (most?) are for the double spawn. Instead, since there seems to be roughly the same number of ring/no ring cases, let's just double the time of the ring cases. Now it's 10 hours or less for the majority, but the unlucky ones will need 12, 13.6, 21, 36, or 100+ hours.

In other words, most will get the ring while they're still getting XP, and if they stick around a few hours longer, even the 12/13.6 guy will get a ring before they leave. But, if you are that unlucky person who needs 100+ hours, you will level out of LOIO long before acquiring a ring. Like everything in EQ, it's a chance.

Still ... even in that worst case scenario, all you lost by going to LOIO was a minuscule amount of plat (I can't believe the plat drop difference between LOIO and Warrens is that significant), and a similarly small amount of faction (remember, a high level character can clear the Warrens in about half an hour, so at most it will take them maybe an hour to match the guy who leveled from there 17-22).

What level are these players? I know it is a popular spot for encs and bards to farm. Will a teeny druid keep a single spawn turned over anywhere near as fast as an enchanter pet or bard is killing 2+ spots? I also wonder what reporting biases there are for ring acquisition times.

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah that's the part that is tricky, ph will be hard to find around level 20 as there's a dozen possible PH and probably 30+ mob in the area. Without AE you basically have to hope there's already a courier up or just kill random stuff and hope you get a courier eventually but you probably won't get many that way and it is about a 3% drop rate.

I was 44 when I did it, not sure how the exp is around there. Worth a shot if it is decent but I'd bolt the second it slows down and come back in the late 30s or even 40s.

Considering there's 6+ actual PH, I wonder if the best way to farm it would be bard swarming everything or have a wizard just gflux everything and PBAE every 30 sec.

There are a tonne of spawn points where the courier can pop. Just because a courier is up and you kill it doesn't mean the respawn will happen at a point you are familiar with.

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Goblin you have to kill 120 mobs per hour and you can't go take a piss without risking having to start over.

mobs will attack you for 10 mins before they get bored, so if you need a pee break, take the PHers you have identified to a quiet corner, give them a bonk to reset their aggression timer, make sure your pet and DS is down and enjoy your quick break.

[Snaggles]

The OP has enough plat to buy a ring as I recall from like page 4.

I get the academic conundrum of how to level a class in EQ without any plat. Some people with melees in 1999 had it rough. Others just started a necro for 30 or 40 levels and funded the melee with passable gear. Half a decade ago my 51 necro on hill giants funded like four of my characters with the essentials.

People can peel, slice, dice, or blend this onion. They can fry it, bake it, or eat it raw. There isn’t a “right way” to play EQ. It’s different shades of painfully slow no matter how you cut it. The only important thing is you have fun and keep going. Or maybe the smarter call it to just quit.

[Jimjam]

I'm finding it a fun, entertaining and informative discussion [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Definitely we need to consider beyond the needs of OP, but the hundreds and hundreds of other potential druid newbs which will stumble upon this 18 page discussion and want to make an educated decision(!)