Druid Solo Guide?

[iruinedyourday]

Any good druid solo guides out there? Like that cool shaman one that one guy made? You know for like newbs who start from scratch?

[Man0warr]

Guides on Wiki for druid are pretty good.

[Crawdad]

I haven't seen a high quality Druid leveling guide out there. There are plenty, like..

Gaviilan's All-in-One Guide is pretty in-depth about the whole being a Druid thing, its just outdated (eg charm doesn't check cha).

Mefdinkin's Guide is a lot more concise but full of good info.

..those are probably the only two Druid guides on the wiki I'd reference. Druids really need a new guide for Velious, as there's so many more targets now for charming and quading.

[brecon]

(1) Go into a zone
(2) Sense Animals
(3) If no animals, is it worth quadding
(4) If not worth quadding but worth root/rotting, does it summon

You only really need guides if you are soloing, and the only solo tactics worth doing are root rotting, kiting, charming, and quadding.

Root Rotting: In velious, mobs have high hp, so I don't think you want to be root rotting unless you have an epic and prolly es arms too. That takes you up to 88 damage / tick while rooted, and you'd treat it more or less exactly how a shaman would. For a 60 druid, you can camp Phase Spiders in DN for carpaces (they don't summon). However, most of the good loot mobs in Velious do summon, so you couldn't really camp Velks by root rotting. Of course you could faction grind or kill other things root rotting. This is probably always worse xp than charming or quadding.

Kiting: The way druids should kite is by (1) charming an animal, (2) aggroing something else with snare, (3) keeping aggro with stuns, and (4) have your pet beat it from the back. This is effective for killing any mobs that don't summon or cast on you. Unless you break your pet at the end, you will be splitting xp as normal. The main place you would use this tactic in velious is in Western Wastes, where you can solo ice burrowers and tantor (when he stops summoning, he is not supposed to summon but was last week). I've soloed ice burrowers already, and I'm sure the silks sell well, or you could try to sell loot rights to the monk chest.

Charming: General Rule is that outdoor zones in velious have animals, indoor zones do not. The exception is Siren's Grotto, but because the seahorses cannot be rooted or snared, trying to charm solo as a druid is pretty scary and it makes breaking in very hard. If you want to charm in velious, you can charm for xp easily, and to farm the skins/tusks for tailoring or quests. Charming works the way it does everywhere else...zones in which you can do it include Iceclad (cougars/wolves), Eastern Wastes (lots), Western Wastes (wolves, mammoths, and rhinos), Great Divide. You optimize xp by going animal vs. animal, but you can also use animals to kill other mobs. For instance in EW, you could charm an animal and solo some of the orc camps.

Quadding: You can quad anywhere you can outrun mobs. Make sure they have simlilar run speeds and are not casters. Best place in Velious is Cobalt Scar for gem drops and wyvern hides, as long as you have COV faction.

[LethClaypool]

I've considered doing a guide myself over the last few years but just haven't had the time not to mention I'd have to go back and think on where exactly I hunted as my memory isn't too great.

Here's kind of a summary of what I did and if you have any questions you're welcome to ask. I'll answer anything the best I can. Some levels might be off slightly.

1 - 7/8: Greater Faydark - I did the noob area around Kaladim and Priest of Discord lifts till 5, specifically saving bone chips from skeletons and selling the weapons for some money. At 5 you get harmony and can move to orc hill. It'll be a little rough but it's doable. The bone chips can either be saved to sell to other players or you can turn them in at the Kaladim Paladin guild for decent experience. The bone chips quests could feasibly take you up to 9 or 10 and there's a lot of skeletons in Butcherblock right outside Kaladim.

8 - 13: North Karana - specifically willowisps. Save any greater light stones you find and turn them in at the gypsy camp for a Concordance of Research which vendors for close to 10pp each. Get a bind at the gypsy camp as well to avoid a long corpse run.

13-16: Lesser Faydark - Sister Camp. It's going to be contested but there's good money here. I went after money as I leveled because my druid was my first character. You'll need to split the sisters with harmony and then melee them down. The fights will be close but if you keep thorns up, treeform (for the added hit point regen), and nuke consistently you can make this happen. You can also vendor at the ranger camp there in Lfay. At 14 you get Spirit of the Wolf and Stinging Swarm, so kiting becomes a bit more feasible but it's extremely mana inefficient at this point. You also get your first animal charm spell, Befriend Animal, at this point.

16-20: West and East Karana. At the lower end of the spectrum I roamed West Karana charming animals, later on East Karana was better. If you're not familiar with charming methodology the idea is to charm an animal and sick it on another animal. When they're both low on hp, you want to invis yourself (or, if you're a woodelf, hide) and break charm, then kill both for full exp. If you let your pet do the kill he will take the majority of the xp. The idea is to let your pet and the enemy do the work but then you get the two kills in the most mana efficient way possible. You'll also get your first set of self-ports at 19. Opening up travel options for you.

20-23: The Overthere. Similar to the last section, you'll be charming. In this case, I usually went with a sabretooth (rhinos tend to be more magic resistant) and then I would just snare a mob, hit it with flame lick a few times to grab aggro, turn /pet taunt off, and then park the pet when the mob was low on exp and fleeing (still snared) before grabbing another one. Doing this you can park three or four mobs a little distance a part but low on hp, break your charm, root the pet (since the level 5 root only last just under a minute), and then take out the four parked monsters for full xp. It's like a more active form of quad kiting but at lower levels. Extremely efficient as long as charm sticks. Save saps from the cacti and excellent sabre tooth tiger hides. The saps sell for a couple gold to a merchant and the hides are used in cultural tailoring so sometimes players will buy them (or you can use them yourself later on for tailoring if that's your thing).

23 - 33/34ish: Lake of Ill Omen. I did a mixture of things here using charm with the tigers again. Same method as the Overthere. There's a couple "tiers" of mobs in LOIO depending on the location. Closer to Firiona Vie is from 15-20ish concerning monster level. Windmill area is like 20-25. Then Sarnak fort is 25 and up. I pretty much started by FV, doing the charm parking method, for a level or two, moved to windmill for a few levels, and then eventually did the Sarnak fort. With the fort you have to watch out for casters but it's still possible to do them (flame lick has a faster cast time than most of their nukes and dots, cast it, back out of range before they get ya). Harmony is your friend. Also keep in mind when it comes to charming you want lots of mobs that are dark blue or just turning green so charm holds and the kills are fast. You have the chance of getting some drops at the fort that sell really well. Particularly, a bracer of the hidden. Also, bone chips galore and hides. Also could look into camping yourself the Invisibility vs Animals ring that makes charming so much easier.

Alternative: Everfrost. Mammoths. They're good money. There are about six spawns that I know of off hand on the tundra that you could easily lock down plus a merchant nearby you can sell those big ass tusks too for 10ish pp a pop. I think these will take you to 29 then you can switch over to Sarnak fort.

34 - 39: Misty Thicket. Halfling Guards. Okay, so word of warning here. Killing halfling guards will lower your faction with a named NPC involved in your epic. However, this faction can be repaired at a later level with relative ease doing a low level quest. This is where quad kiting becomes an option. Hopefully if you've followed my guide so far you've made some decent money and can afford some decent gear to buff up your mana pool because here's where it becomes more important. The money here is excellent. Each guard drops a shield and spear that sells for several plat to merchants. I usually just employ a low level halfling to take my haul into town and sell it, giving them a fraction of the money for their time or let them loot shields for a couple plat each. Beware of the female halfling druid. That's the epic NPC I was telling you about. She's rough and she will mess your day up.

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This is all I got for now but I'll expand some more later. 34-39 is where group porting comes into play so there's another option for extra money.

[LethClaypool]

Errors concerning level ranges and redundancy of my language use aside this should give any druid starting out a solid start.

[iruinedyourday]

Sa-wheeet! I love this stuff just to read about eq let alone hear about new tricks! Thanks for the writeup!

[LethClaypool]

Glad you like it!

Now that I've written out that much I'm considering expanding it into a full guide. I have a bunch of alternate spots for those ranges as well since I get bored and regularly switch up my hunting spots.

Here's the rest but without explanations up until 57. Gonna try and spend some time compiling a bunch of info later.

39 - 44 Butcherblock dwarves.
45 - 49 Lake of Ill omen water goblins.
49 - 53 Timourous Deep - spirocs.
52 - 57ish? Everfrost - McMarren guards. (I think that's their names. There's three of them.)

I quad a lot because I'm regularly busy while playing but I have a plethora of other spots in mind if druids feel like charming, kiting, or rotting. I guess I could write up an updated gearing guide as well.

[Telin]

I really like the quad kiting locations found here:

http://www.thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-3947.html

[Man0warr]

I'd kill guards in HHK over halfling guards in Misty for that level range.