Sham/Necro Duo Spots 53+

[zaneosak]

Hello. It seems like the server is super crowded since the holiday XP weekend. 1800 every night 7 days a week. Usual spots are tough but me and my shaman buddy have been doing alot of duo-ing lately. He's 55 (Sham) I am 53 (Nec) almost 54.

We have done spots like , BW Giant fort non stop pulls, KC Captain, KC RCY, Hole drop-down/castle ent, WL Goo/FD 3 room triangle. Most of these spots minus the hole are either always camped 24/7 or starting to green out for him at 55/56.

Anybody have any other good spots? Perhaps off the beaten path? I suppose we could do Charming in HS with Slow and pet swapping, we were waiting until 54 for Thrall of Bones charm spell to do HS.

The main strategy(s) we use are just chain pulling (me or him, basically whoever doesnt need mana at the time) and rooting/slowing everything with PE with both pets hitting a mob and me splurting+1 dotting everything in the camp. Its efficient but most of the spots we really went to town on are starting to green out. Sometimes we let him face tank so my rogue pet can backstab. The duo is pretty sick with Regrowth+Lich and me just feeding him HP with my hp drain heal. I am sure at 54 with shadowbond it will be even better.

We pretty much will try anything, we are just looking for some spots maybe not thought of. I think the hole is still very good but we need to find a spot deeper in the zone away from the green spawns, just not super familiar with the place, perhaps we just crawl and see, just dangerous/time consuming to CR.

I was thinking maybe something weird in velious, but not totally sure, those mobs do have alot of hp, but that isn't a huge issue. Seb seems doable but the wizards do nuke the pets quite quickly.

Any cool/weird/unorthodox spots anybody wants to share? I always like hearing weird/cool stuff that people come up with. We used to make threads on here regarding our cleric/chanter duo climbing thru the 40s and 50s and the knowledge of the player base always came up with some cool weird spots.

Cheers

[Suwu]

Basement in Howling Stones.

[loramin]

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

Anybody have any other good spots? Perhaps off the beaten path?
...
Any cool/weird/unorthodox spots anybody wants to share?

If you want to take the most obvious path others can probably make better recommendations, but if you want something off the beaten path you should check out the Per-Level Hunting Guide (link in my signature). It's got tons of ideas for places both on and off the beaten path, and you can filter it by class to find the most promising places.

Not every spot will work for duos (eg. HS entrance probably won't have enough mobs for two people), but most should.

Also, Suwu's suggestion of HS basement (which is in the guide) is an excellent one: I soloed Loramin to 60 there, and pretty much the only classes I ever saw down there were Necromancers and Shaman. I sometimes duoed with Necros, and while it may not have been the best spot to play to both our strengths, it certainly worked pretty well.

[zaneosak]

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

If you want to take the most obvious path others can probably make better recommendations, but if you want something off the beaten path you should check out the Per-Level Hunting Guide (link in my signature). It's got tons of ideas for places both on and off the beaten path, and you can filter it by class to find the most promising places.

Not every spot will work for duos (eg. HS entrance probably won't have enough mobs for two people), but most should.

Thanks. I have used it before but sometimes threads like these help zero into spots on the exact composition presented. I will check it out again, it seems like it's undergone some formatting changes since last time I was on it, very nice.

We tend to try to go for as high of ZEM as possible but so many of those zones (COM,Seb,KC,etc.) are camped so sometimes lower ZEM with high mob density ends up being a net positive.

Will check it out, thanks.

[E-Queue]

You could maybe mess around with phase spiders in DN? I think there's ample room there to fear kite and they weren't super camped back when I was more active. I seem to remember some weird teleport proc so I wouldn't recommend face tanking them though.

Anyway just an idea that might be less perma-camped. Plus people need to spend more time in Velious...

[Barlu]

HS basement would be a great choice but unfortunately I think you are going to find it heavily camped. North is usually the same way given the ease of obtaining a key and that you can “safely” camp there on the ramp. . I always found HS West to be the best exp on my enchanter solo at 57 all the way to 60. I’m guessing at 54 you guys could probably start killing there although it can be much more difficult to break in than North given the 2 pathers that come past the painting drop down.

Mob level will be a little harder than you’d like to charm but still doable. If memory serves, Cajoling Whispers still works on a lot of mobs meaning plenty are lvl 46 or below (PHs are higher level). You will see the same named as North (minus wing boss and Sentinent Bile) which max out at 50 I believe and don’t summon. You will occasionally see an elementalbone skeleton which is lvl 49+ but for the most part I think you will be ok there at 54 especially with the Shaman as a safety net and Malo on pets.

Getting the key to west will likely be tricky though for a Necro your level unless you get really luck at The Crypt Keeper is surrounded by all undead. Even then your going to need a lot of calms to stick. Crypt Keeper is kind of annoying to kill and will dot your pet so be careful on recharm if it breaks. Once you get a West key though as long as you keep corpsing it will leave you with a spot that most people don’t have access to. Final plus for West is that if there is an Enchanter soloing in there they rarely go passed the drop down and there are about 15 mobs passed the drop down on a short timer so plenty to kill.

Another note on the Hole is that corpse recovery really isn’t too bad at all. Lvl 1 halfling rogue that worships Brell can wander the whole zone with sneak/hide and not get killed with the exception of Master Yael. Get 2 rogues there and bind them outside. If you wipe just consent yourselves pull to drop down suicide the rogue to reapawn ourside and drag back to enterance. Halfling can sneak in through the little hole and don’t need a key.

[zaneosak]

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

HS basement would be a great choice but unfortunately I think you are going to find it heavily camped. North is usually the same way given the ease of obtaining a key and that you can “safely” camp there on the ramp. . I always found HS West to be the best exp on my enchanter solo at 57 all the way to 60. I’m guessing at 54 you guys could probably start killing there although it can be much more difficult to break in than North given the 2 pathers that come past the painting drop down.

Mob level will be a little harder than you’d like to charm but still doable. If memory serves, Cajoling Whispers still works on a lot of mobs meaning plenty are lvl 46 or below (PHs are higher level). You will see the same named as North (minus wing boss and Sentinent Bile) which max out at 50 I believe and don’t summon. You will occasionally see an elementalbone skeleton which is lvl 49+ but for the most part I think you will be ok there at 54 especially with the Shaman as a safety net and Malo on pets.

Getting the key to west will likely be tricky though for a Necro your level unless you get really luck at The Crypt Keeper is surrounded by all undead. Even then your going to need a lot of calms to stick. Crypt Keeper is kind of annoying to kill and will dot your pet so be careful on recharm if it breaks. Once you get a West key though as long as you keep corpsing it will leave you with a spot that most people don’t have access to. Final plus for West is that if there is an Enchanter soloing in there they rarely go passed the drop down and there are about 15 mobs passed the drop down on a short timer so plenty to kill.

Another note on the Hole is that corpse recovery really isn’t too bad at all. Lvl 1 halfling rogue that worships Brell can wander the whole zone with sneak/hide and not get killed with the exception of Master Yael. Get 2 rogues there and bind them outside. If you wipe just consent yourselves pull to drop down suicide the rogue to reapawn ourside and drag back to enterance. Halfling can sneak in through the little hole and don’t need a key.

Thanks for the info. I will consider this. I did notice that /who charasis is A TON more people than last year when we were duo-ing enc/cleric, it was max 6 people back then. I find there to be an average of 10-12 these days.

I already got my halfling to the hole after an annoying CR there the other day, so that should be good now, just need to find a place to camp that has blue mobs.

[derpcake2]

HHK has a lot of stuff you can pull (nobles, bards, nameds with zero loot).

That being said you'll get banned for boxing eventually.

Cheers.

[zaneosak]

Originally Posted by derpcake2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

HHK has a lot of stuff you can pull (nobles, bards, nameds with zero loot).

That being said you'll get banned for boxing eventually.

Cheers.

That's cute. Not a boxer here, pal. I did nobles for a bit on the necro but it's impossible to get that camp unless you get lucky. Also duo-ing that camp sounds like bad juju, anybody 50+ with root can take that baby all by themselves, no need to share that juicy ZEM.

[loramin]

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

We tend to try to go for as high of ZEM as possible but so many of those zones (COM,Seb,KC,etc.) are camped so sometimes lower ZEM with high mob density ends up being a net positive.

Just something to keep in mind: you shouldn't trust what anyone says the ZEMs are. Don't trust popular opinion, and don't trust the wiki (even the Per-Level guide).

Don't trust people's opinions because they're just that: opinions. To truly measure a ZEM you have to kill a whole lot of mobs of exactly the same level, then go kill a whole bunch of mobs of the same level in another zone, and then do it all again in a third zone (so that you can triangulate). When someone mentions a ZEM it's either coming from their (faulty) memories of live, what they heard from other players, or their own recollection of the zone ... which can easily result in a bad guess at a ZEM. For instance, they might remember getting good XP even if the ZEM was terrible, because (say) the mobs in the zone had low HP. In other words, they might be correct that you'll level fast in X zone, but it might have nothing to do with the ZEM.

Meanwhile the wiki (and Per-Level guide) uses the stock (ie. live) EQEmulator ZEMs. Not only do we not have live ZEMs here, we don't even have classic ones: the devs deliberately altered some ZEMs to be different from classic, to restore the mystery that ZEMs used to have in classic. The Per-Level guide still uses those ZEMs anyway because many are correct, and they're better than nothing, but a certain percentage are flat out wrong (and there's a note about that on the guide).

TLDR: Don't believe anyone (including me in the Per-Level guide) when they say a zone has X ZEM. No one but Nilbog and Rogean know the true ZEMs, and it will forever stay that way until enough motivated people take the time to research P99's actual ZEMs.