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

[Danyelle]

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

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]

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

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.

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[Orruar]

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

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]

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

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. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[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 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[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!