Use the slider at 100%, love it; was Turning off combat and quest! xp, love it

[Yimway]

Levatino wrote:

you may have a point about lower tier content and maybe the devs should look into it and do more revamps? but it's possible to play like this like it's possible to mentor down and do the content.. however doing red quests on red mobs is a challenge cause even with lots of aa you still have resists (level is actual lower) something I didn't notice being mentored and also mob being red (level is artificially lower)

An example in point, my wife and I duo'd up an Inq+Wizard doing every quest we could get our hands on.

We were in everfrost and the epicx2 was up at the great tree.  The x2 was yellow and 3 levels over us, we had no tank, no group, just the 2 of us.  We trivially killed the x2 with a healer and a wizard.

How?  Cause all the freaking aa made our toons so insanely overpowered old content mobs just don't stand a chance.

[Levatino]

the epic in the corner of that alcove you mean? cause chieftain is not an epic only a triple up heroic lvl 47.

and this was after reveamp of EF? you were not mentored but only leveled up through levellocking. then first congratz on the achievement. second the inq with battle cleric is a killing machine, have myself one at 47 and also lots of aa. he can tank and heal that in combo with an wiz who can have huge dps is a very fine duo. so watch out for calling op before you know it the inq and wiz will get nerfed..

also I myself find that mentoring is op but I know it will be there and i know SOE will never take it away cause how would lvl 80 racers ever going to get enough aa..

so what do you suggest? cause if you call for toughening up the content the people who race to 80 are going to get hurt.. and if you call to nerf the aa and the abilty to gain them early will hurt people who want to raid at end level..

[Trellium]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Trellium wrote:

It is obvious that you have never played this way, so hardly makes you an expert. I am sorry your mind is not open to this way of playing. The issue is entirely yours.

To get the MOST challenging play for the longest time ... level locking is the way to go. If you want to race through 79 levels to play the last one, that is your choice and not mine. I will point out that by racing through to 80 and then going back you have inherently made the vast majority of the content of 79 levels trivial.

I know how to add complexity and challenge to my game. If you don't like it, it's entirely your issue and obviously you are only trying to troll the thread rather than actually playing this way to see if you like it. Your choice.

1) Yes I have played this way, when I played PVP, it was by far the best way to do it.  Level lock, build as many freakin aa as possible while keeping your level low.  But when I did it, you had to suicide to a guard 100x in a row to get enough debt up to keep from getting adventure xp while turning in quests.

I'm quite familiar with the rewards of the playstyle, and I'm quite familiar with how overpowered it makes you vs lower tier content.  Not quite as overpowered as mentoring, but honestly.  A level 80 in master crafted with only 20 aa mentored to say level 40 next to someone level locked at 40 with 80+ aa, the level locked toon is honestly more overpowered.  You can reproduce that effect on test_copy sometime if you don't believe me.

2) Again, its no the most challenging way, the most challenging way is playing the content as it was orriginally designed.  No AA spent before level 50, no blue stats.

3) As I said, play however you like, I only chimed in cause you were making the case that this is somehow the most challenging way to play, when no, it really isn't challenging at all.  You're playing content designed for mechanics many expansions old with abilities and augments far, far beyond your characters intended potential when the content was created.

Since the entire point is NOT to level before your quests can no longer be completed UNLESS YOU LEVEL (by far the sincle most overpowering step to take), you inherently find the game has become one in which you are up against hard quests. It absolutely makes the game harder. The game adjusts to the AA's given, since you can suddenly hunt harder mobs (higher color or heroics).

It opens up content that simply doesn't exist in your over simplified portrayal. You prefer everyone levels to 80 asap, and go back to kill things with raid gear. For some of us, that trivializes the game. We play with items from the tier, and limited to the spells we have.

The issue is that there are few people in the earlier zones. You need to do more yourself. Playing this way provides a ton of content that self adjusts to what you can handle.

Its far harder to play this way than it is to spend 5 minutes mentoring an 80 to level 15 and killing a mob. Not everyone loves grinding through levels intent on only playing the last one. We  want to really enjoy our time through the whole game, and we also like that we get rewards along the way in terms of AA's.

Look, you just aren't going to get it. That's fine, but some of us actually PLAY the content instead of the alternative you promote which is that the content should be unplayed or trivial.

Seriously, what is it to you if people play the lower levels for AA's and the intent to do all quests? Does it hurt your level 80 raids? Of course not. You just want to have an opinion, no matter how irrelevant to your gameplay.

[Trellium]

Levatino wrote:

the epic in the corner of that alcove you mean? cause chieftain is not an epic only a triple up heroic lvl 47.

and this was after reveamp of EF? you were not mentored but only leveled up through levellocking. then first congratz on the achievement. second the inq with battle cleric is a killing machine, have myself one at 47 and also lots of aa. he can tank and heal that in combo with an wiz who can have huge dps is a very fine duo. so watch out for calling op before you know it the inq and wiz will get nerfed..

also I myself find that mentoring is op but I know it will be there and i know SOE will never take it away cause how would lvl 80 racers ever going to get enough aa..

so what do you suggest? cause if you call for toughening up the content the people who race to 80 are going to get hurt.. and if you call to nerf the aa and the abilty to gain them early will hurt people who want to raid at end level..

What he is saying is that only people who play through the first 80 levels should have access to AA's, and then they should also be able to mentor down to any level to gather his AA's because somehow EQ2 "was meant to be played that way". It's rubbish, but he won't see it. He dislikes anyone who plays differently from the way he did it ("the HARD way").

He wants to make it sound like people who level as slowly as possible to do all the quests somehow do less work than he does. When it comes down to it, we will have played against more orange and red mobs for more levels with smaller groups (or solo) than he ever could.

And that's his issue.

He thinks he and his wife were overpowered against the EF mob. I say he should have done it 2 levels sooner! Maybe he should go beat up on someone bigger. That's the whole point of having a red questbook; if success is sure then maybe a person is leveling too fast. Or maybe he should have tried to solo it instead of overpowering the system with extra DPS. But, since their two toons found it easy, its obviously also too easy for someone solo two levels lower. He doesn't get that it's his own fault. He and his wife decided to level too fast, and made the content trivial given his aa's.

[Trellium]

Anyway, back to the thread's real intent:

My wife and I rerolled on Test server. We recreated our guild, and got it to level 10 in the first week with just the two of us.

No cash, and the broker on Test isn't helpful since almost nothing sells. Items like tradeskill recipes that we tend to get a lot of (even the rares since we are in each level range so long) have no value on Test since almost all advanced recipe books are sold on a merchant.

There aren't many low level mastercrafted items on the broker so we either get someone to make it for us ... or we make a bunch of alts to do all the tradeskills. We made the alts and found they can all do the Mara harvesting quests so we have cash.

Then we won Chikkin's plat giveaway a couple of times (Thanks Chikkin!). Now we have funds to help us pay for the higher level tradeskilling costs.

We also did a few of the heritage quests with 8 of our characters; hence how the guild got to 10.

We almost never see anyone else hunting in our zones, but the Test channel works a lot like a big guild chat. People there are really friendly. Looks like we are staying.

Right now I have a level 15 shadow night/fury combo that's fun, and level locked. The SK is also level 40 in alchemy, all of it from his own harvesting. That's been an awful lot of death, but he has enough rares now to do basic gear and spells.

Now, if anyone wants to try out Test server for a tough level locking experience you can join our guild if you like. Not that we have much to offer, except more letters above your name. The name is oddly appropriate (Procrastinators of Destiny) for this tyle of play, even though we inherited the original guild on Lucan DLere.

We also offer access to our level 30 guild and guild hall on Lucan DLere if anyone has need of it there, although it looks like it will be a very empty hall but has the amenities.

Ok, back to working on a new guild hall on Test!

[Krazzil]

My opinion on the AA Slider.

WOW!

I turned the Combat and Adventure XP back on, Slide the slider to 100% AA and the AA XP is flowing like the river in Nek Forest!

I didn't get much time last night but I did ding an AA point.

[Yimway]

Trellium wrote:

so what do you suggest? cause if you call for toughening up the content the people who race to 80 are going to get hurt.. and if you call to nerf the aa and the abilty to gain them early will hurt people who want to raid at end level..

What he is saying is that only people who play through the first 80 levels should have access to AA's, and then they should also be able to mentor down to any level to gather his AA's because somehow EQ2 "was meant to be played that way". It's rubbish, but he won't see it. He dislikes anyone who plays differently from the way he did it ("the HARD way").

No, all I said was doing shattered lands content with spent aa is in no means 'the most challenging path' as the previous posters were touting.

I'm not suggesting anything be changed, I'm just stating, doing old world content with new world aa, and gear, is by no means remotely as challenging as it was before.  And to that end, it isn't 'the most challenging path' it is in fact /easymode.

As I've said previously, play the content however you like, I really don't care, I'll just challenge any statement that boasts it is somehow *difficult*.  As I said, try doing this content without all the new mechanics and see if that is more or less challenging than doing it red with all the new toys.

While I think alternative ruleset servers are not a wise investment of dev time, a eq2 reboot server with orriginal rulesets would demonstrate what doing this content at a challenge level would be like.

[gnargnargnar]

I personally do not level lock for challenge. I level lock because it is fun to be overpowered.  I enjoy seeing what kind of a beast of a character that I can make at level 15, at level 20, etc, etc. Part of this is decking your character out in full MC everything, part of this is seeing how many aa's you can muster at any given level.  Likewise, you will see most people who do level lock picking classes that are powerful solo classes in their own right - crusaders, battle priests, brawlers...

But at any rate, the real reason I popped into this thread was the new aaxp slider... it can be rediculous.  And although I had fun taking my warden to aa 50 by level 19 over the course of a month or so, I don't ever see myself doing so in the future.. at least not the way I did it before the slider.

I had two friends that I used to play EQ1 with.. they had tried EQ2 a couple years ago, but.. they were used to grinding out their AA's, and did not like being forced to solo/quest (or risk gimping their characters).  I told them about the aaxp slider patch , encouraged them to try again, and invited both back via recruit-a-friend. We all played solo at different times the first night, and got to around level 15 in timorous deep. The following two nights, we grouped up and just went to dungeons to grind.. keeping the aa slider at about 50% until level 22 or so (for a few MC weapons), then dumping it to 100%.

We were all getting triple(?) exp from the recruit a friend bonus, the server was giving increased exp (dunno if this stacked) for the weekend.

But regardless, the end result after probably 10 hours of grinding mobs (over two days) and named hunting was around 45 aa's apiece at level 22.  And probably two new customers, as my friends and I had a blast doing so.

I also brought my Warden into the group.. at 62aa's , it had gotten to the point that it was taking dozens of quests to get one aa. With all the other exp bonuses ticking and vitality on, I ground out two full aa's in about 17 minutes.

Anyways, just random musings.

[Cloudrat]

Levatino wrote:

• Try to get your mc armour and weapons as soon as possible. Don't forget rings, earrings, wrist items and so on. Guild trade skillers are your best friends. Just give the the rares and they will happily make you the items.

Bitter old crone that I am, I just couldn't pass this by.  You left out the fuels and other resources the crafter has to come up with to make your gear.  Just give them the rares???   I think you should include picking a crafting profession to get that nice free 45% run speed earring from doing crafting epic. If you do your crafting first, you will be much better off with your level locked toon as well as having a greater understanding of the entire game.  There is aa to be found in crafting quests as well as the many other perks of being an 80 crafter first.

[Levatino]

Cloudrat wrote:

Levatino wrote:

• Try to get your mc armour and weapons as soon as possible. Don't forget rings, earrings, wrist items and so on. Guild trade skillers are your best friends. Just give the the rares and they will happily make you the items.

Bitter old crone that I am, I just couldn't pass this by.  You left out the fuels and other resources the crafter has to come up with to make your gear.  Just give them the rares???   I think you should include picking a crafting profession to get that nice free 45% run speed earring from doing crafting epic. If you do your crafting first, you will be much better off with your level locked toon as well as having a greater understanding of the entire game.  There is aa to be found in crafting quests as well as the many other perks of being an 80 crafter first.

you are right I should correct this.. maybe cause I'm in a guild that says don't bother about fuel. Other resources well, it can be profided by the guild cause if you are in a guild who doesn't donate resources into the harvest box?

about the crafting profession it, yes it can be helpfull but if you are someone like me who doesn't give much about crafting other then get it to lvl10 cause you'll need to do some crafting for adventure quests it can be a pain to do so.. although have to admit it's a lot easier now.

btw in general my apologies for lack of updates, had loss of internet for a week. so couldn't progress or write updates.

Still lvl 52 and 121 aa but wow that slider and the selfmentoring works a lot.. had to do some bosses i missed in WC and well aa goes up (not that much but I can imagine doing same tier killings will do wonders..) I also have started a new char just cause of this slider thing.. Skag an Iksar, hate it that troll lost waterbreathing.. sure you have totems for that and Butra uses it a lot now.. but like to have this as a race specific thing..

ok will change the top post with your suggestion cloudrat thanks for the info, see you till next update on two chars now

[bks6721]

I rolled a new Monk last weekend.  Once she hit level 10 I slid the slider over to 100%.  I would occasionally slide it back to level up a bit.  By Sunday night I had a lvl 15 Monk with 45aa.  I've only done half of the TD quests, all quests in the Caves, Peet Bog, Forest Ruins and most of them in Antonica.  I haven't touched Greater Fay or any other low zones yet.

Seems like 100aa by level 25 will be pretty easy.

[Lortet]

Pauly@Befallen wrote:

I rolled a new Monk last weekend.  Once she hit level 10 I slid the slider over to 100%.  I would occasionally slide it back to level up a bit.  By Sunday night I had a lvl 15 Monk with 45aa.  I've only done half of the TD quests, all quests in the Caves, Peet Bog, Forest Ruins and most of them in Antonica.  I haven't touched Greater Fay or any other low zones yet.

Seems like 100aa by level 25 will be pretty easy.

While it is much faster to get the aa's now - remember that the "last weekend" mentioned in your post included both experience bonus and aa bonus - so you were getting things super "bonused". I got 23 aa points in just over two hours on a fury alt myself in TD on Sunday.

[Levatino]

wow with that speed you could be 200 when you reach 50.. 45 with 15 is really fast.. nice job.. can't wait to play my alt now after reaching level 10..

[Levatino]

ok started new alt, Skag, Iksar Sk (sorry just love the class) still lvl 10 in TD but already 8 aa.

Butra haven't played him for a while now, but will this weekend again want to finish LS and EF

[bks6721]

Hykaree@Runnyeye wrote:

Pauly@Befallen wrote:

I rolled a new Monk last weekend.  Once she hit level 10 I slid the slider over to 100%.  I would occasionally slide it back to level up a bit.  By Sunday night I had a lvl 15 Monk with 45aa.  I've only done half of the TD quests, all quests in the Caves, Peet Bog, Forest Ruins and most of them in Antonica.  I haven't touched Greater Fay or any other low zones yet.

Seems like 100aa by level 25 will be pretty easy.

While it is much faster to get the aa's now - remember that the "last weekend" mentioned in your post included both experience bonus and aa bonus - so you were getting things super "bonused". I got 23 aa points in just over two hours on a fury alt myself in TD on Sunday.

It was also with a 30% bonus for having level 80's as well as the bonus's you mentioned.

[Levatino]

Skag my baby Sk is still lvl 10 but already 19 aa, and still have to go to Cl, Neriak, Ant and GF so and curious where my aa's will be before I have to lvl to 11.

AA scoring is easier as ever with the slider maybe even to easy..

[Ghouti]

I must admit with slider there is no challenge anymore, now that can be good or bad but thats for each to decide. My monk gained a heck of a lot of AA since the slider now on 132 or so AA at lvl 52. But havent played her for a time since i tried a new character, Ghoulfyst a now lvl 12 Inquisitor.

I did most of the quests in freeport, Commonlands (up to lvl 16-17), TD (up to lvl 17), Darklight woods and now busy with GF. Stopped with combat xp at lvl 12 ... now on ... 35 AA ... so you can easily accomplish a ratio of 1:3. And i can remember first part was actually the slowest lol, AA is still fast from combat xp only so before i go to 15 i'll probably have quite a bit more ...

[Vanayre]

I've been a fan of this level locking since we came back to the game. I had a 27 Bruiser that has 53 aa's then we concentrated on getting one set of characters to 80, who are now 78. I went and made a baby SK and took advantage of the xp bonus weekend a couple weeks back, she is now level 15 with 48 aa's.

I have only done DL woods, Tim Deep and a tiny bit of CL so she still has a lot of stuff to do before I'm going to level her some more. I've started using Fluffy's Journal UI so I can keep track of which quests she is still missing that she can do. Its been a lot of fun

I actually got all of her Masters just from killing named that were my level so that was fun.

[Levatino]

Playing Skag still. Currently still lvl 10 xp wise but aa is now 29, almost 30.. By far the furtest I came playing as a lvl 10. And still the end is not near as a lvl 10.. Hae lots of quests left in Cl and Ant..

So back to the game  

[Levatino]

Skag is now lvl 12 with 33 aa. Doing quests now yellow to me. Am planning to go to Kelethin to also do the quests there after I emptied some of my journal .

Currently filling up my STR line, after that going towards reaver.

[Grugg]

What are the pieces that make up mastercrafted Tier 2 plate armor? Any imbues/adornments/etc. recommendations for survivability?

[Levatino]

Grugg wrote:

What are the pieces that make up mastercrafted Tier 2 plate armor? Any imbues/adornments/etc. recommendations for survivability?

Tier 2 - Level 10-19 - Skill 20+ :: Antonica, Commonlands, Vale of Shattering (access quest needed), Greater Faydark (eastern portion near Crushbone and the spires), Darklight Woods, Timorous Deep

MC Plate Armor is blackened iron clusters

Imbues and adornments well depends on the class. With imbued you can also take blessed for some weapons this may be better for your class.

So what class do you play?

[Grugg]

Levatino wrote:

Grugg wrote:

What are the pieces that make up mastercrafted Tier 2 plate armor? Any imbues/adornments/etc. recommendations for survivability?

Tier 2 - Level 10-19 - Skill 20+ :: Antonica, Commonlands, Vale of Shattering (access quest needed), Greater Faydark (eastern portion near Crushbone and the spires), Darklight Woods, Timorous Deep

MC Plate Armor is blackened iron clusters

Imbues and adornments well depends on the class. With imbued you can also take blessed for some weapons this may be better for your class.

So what class do you play?

At the moment, Pally, but I intend to betray eventually. (I'm also working toward becoming an Armorer.)

I'm using a Blessed Blackened Iron Claymore as my weapon currently. It's awesome. (Not as awesome as this though.)

[Levatino]

as a crusader (paladin, sk) it might be better to use a one-handed weapon, cause you then can also use a shield which then can be used in combo with a CA.

I used this one at that level

[Levatino]

Skag is still lvl 12 but now with 41 aa, and as a lvl 12 almost finished GF. Did the first heritage quest started in GF. Lots of fun especially as a lvl 12... Battling red lvl's is challenging.

Now planning on questing more close to home, CL here I come.

[Levatino]

In the weekend I'll adapt the guide to the new situation with the slider

[Ghouti]

Levatino wrote:

Skag is still lvl 12 but now with 41 aa, and as a lvl 12 almost finished GF. Did the first heritage quest started in GF. Lots of fun especially as a lvl 12... Battling red lvl's is challenging.

Now planning on questing more close to home, CL here I come.

It's a fact with the slider AA is way to easy to get, the challenge isnt in getting a lot of AA but finding all the quests / doing them at lower lvls. Still lvl 12 breached the 500 quests bar and now sitting on 57 AA ... got almost no quests left to do easily but want to get 60 AA before i lvl so i've got bragging rights to have reached a ratio of 1:5

[RollerDog]

Ghouti -- have you been doing any pure grinding to reach 57 AA or is it all due to quests and the grinding associated with quests?

[Levatino]

Ghouti wrote:

Levatino wrote:

Skag is still lvl 12 but now with 41 aa, and as a lvl 12 almost finished GF. Did the first heritage quest started in GF. Lots of fun especially as a lvl 12... Battling red lvl's is challenging.

Now planning on questing more close to home, CL here I come.

It's a fact with the slider AA is way to easy to get, the challenge isnt in getting a lot of AA but finding all the quests / doing them at lower lvls. Still lvl 12 breached the 500 quests bar and now sitting on 57 AA ... got almost no quests left to do easily but want to get 60 AA before i lvl so i've got bragging rights to have reached a ratio of 1:5

breaching 500 won't be a problem for me either, am at 467 now and totally not finished in CL, DLW, Ant and TD.. but wow 57 aa at lvl 12 is impressive.. have something to do I see

[Ghouti]

RollerDog wrote:

Ghouti -- have you been doing any pure grinding to reach 57 AA or is it all due to quests and the grinding associated with quests?

Well before the slider we only got AA from quests and named mobs, and well i never spent much time clearing out areas at all. But with the slider i dont mind grinding a bit of mobs during a quest. So i'd say that at least half of the AA earned now is from grinding the mobs.

So in light of your question i'd say grinding associated with quests plus a bit of extra grinding in between ... after all it's easy enough to get 10 agro mobs to attack you then kill them in a few seconds ...

Levatino wrote:

breaching 500 won't be a problem for me either, am at 467 now and totally not finished in CL, DLW, Ant and TD.. but wow 57 aa at lvl 12 is impressive.. have something to do I see

Wow where did you get that many quests from if you havent even finished the above ... i've done all the zones up to about the lvl 17 quests and only have an handfull quests left. Even using fluffy to see if i got all the quests.