A couple of recent threads have prompted me to post this, which will be a
summary of the steps I had to take to bring Kuloth up to a point where he
could tank contemporary group content.

The reason why I'm posting this is that it is apparent to me that most
people who are in uberguilds are completely ignorant of what is neccessary
to keep up without an uberguild, and completely *disdainful* of the repeated
requests by the masses to make it more possible to do so. (note: possible -
not easier, not easy, just possible)

At the beginning of the scale, Kuloth is level 52 and has just solo fear
kited his last 6 levels in the dreadlands, because he was sick of grouping
with idiots and assholes, and soloing was faster back then if you were good
enough at it. At this point Kuloth is the 2nd highest level person in his
guild at 52 - in a fairly large family guild.

At the end of the scale, Kuloth is 65 with 108 AA's and about 7,500hp fully
buffed. Still nowhere near even vaguely credible for a raider, but for
somebody wearing zero raid loot who has bought zero plat, not too shabby.
Here Kuloth is in a weekend raiding guild who are equal to Grummus.

At 52, the first thing I needed to do was get some new gear. I was literally
wearing stuff that had either been dropped by mobs I had been grouping, or
quested. I was wearing three pieces of Darkforge (Sol Ro quest armour) and
they were my best pieces. If you can picture taking this outfit to PoI and
trying to tank, that's where I was at.

So I went to Rathe and fear kited giants for an absolute age, literally up
until the point where I never wanted to see another giant ever again, had
actually made hot buttons for /ooc statements such as "kill ALL of the
placeholders [lengthy explanation of what and why]", and had made a large
number of friends. We are talking serious time investment.

Geared up with bazaar crap to a sub-cultural level, (a full set of cultural
armour would have cost me around 15x 40 hour weeks of fear kiting giants), I
returned to the planes and attempted to tank. I must briefly mention here
the couple of hundred hours I spent building up my enchanter alt's smithing
skill to almost 200, only to realise the project was the MOST expensive way
of getting cultural armour for my main.

At this point, I made the following observations:

a) I could barely tank PoI mobs, but a single PoD mob could 4 round me
b) A warrior of comparable level/gear had almost a thousand extra hitpoints.
A 30% raw advantage.
c) most of the tanks I was competing with were massively twinked alts of
either level 65 casters or more rarely an uberguild member. It was quite
common to lose the MT slot to a warrior 5 levels below me.
d) The entire Planes of Power expansion assumed that a tank would be wearing
VT or at least ToV gear, marginalising the 90% of the playerbase incapable
of obtaining that shit.
e) I was (rightly) expected to be able to tank by every group
f) Pick up groups were still hell - idiots, assholes, people who leave after
one wipe, people who leave after 10 minutes, spending hours looking for a
cleric, or a slower...

Remember, this was back when "snap agro" hadn't been "invented" yet. I was
doing it - nobody could take agro off me during or after a pull if I wanted
to keep it - but something like 9 out of 10 slowers refused to *try* slowing
on incoming. Nevertheless, two things bore me out:

a) 100% effective agro control
b) Removal of the need for crowd control using FD with backup RD (real
death), since adds usually wiped the whole group.

I remember taking the entirity of level 53 in a single 11-hour grind in PoD.
However, things remained utter shit until the greatest thing that can
possibly befall a Shadowknight, landed in Kuloth's lap.

My friend's Shaman alt appeared. The SK/Shaman duo opened doors.

We duo'd 55-58 in PoN, using the combination of FD/RD pulling and the
excellent slow kill powers of this duo. We then moved to Velk's and I bought
my first cultural pieces by selling multiple SCHWs. We gave Old Seb a try,
and managed to upgrade my weapon to WMBS on funds obtained from there. WMBS
remained the best available weapon for a non-uberguilder until GoD.

Then Veksar arrived. Veksar is without doubt the best new zone for
non-uberguilders Sony have ever released. If they ever want to do something
for the forgotten 90% of their playerbase, they should base an entire
expansion on Veksar style encounters. I'm talking single-groupable or
duo-able camps with named mobs that drop genuine upgrades. 59-62 were almost
exclusively Veksar levels, and the seven pieces of loot I wore from Veksar
allowed me to subsequently tank PoV to 65. Selling extra Veksar drops
allowed me to buy other upgrades.

Then came a few hundred hours of LDoN, a quested Tactics key, and some
Tactics camping, and there we are, present day Kuloth.

Now, the thing I should mention is that I immensely enjoyed that entire
process. I found some of it disheartening, but the overwhelming result of
the struggle was an excellent game, and many hundreds of hours of engrossing
playtime. So if I found it fun, what do I want changed?

Every expansion should have, god forbid, at least one zone like Veksar,
where the other 90% of the population can obtain gear, through actual
stimulating challenges, that is almost equal to the 2nd best previous shit.
For GoD that would have been near-elemental quality drops falling off nameds
in a zone you don't need a single raid to get to. I don't give a rat damn
how hard you make it, so long as it's *possible*. So much of the expansions
I keep paying for is permanently locked away - doable single-group
encounters I can't even attempt because a 72-man VT-geared raid is in the
way. By all means have the mobs quad 900's and summon, or 1500's if you have
to. We'll work it out, we always do.

We're the guys who have always had to.

Regards,
James

Yeah, that zone is "da bawm". Only managed to get a group togeather
for it on one occasion, but it was the most fun zone we have ever been
in. (Now if only our cleric didn't get shipped off to boot camp, we
could try it agin.)

-Chuck. (www.wormspeaker.com)
_____________________________________________________
Spread love and understanding...
but don't be afraid to bloody your knuckles doing it.
                                 -Alex Ross

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 03:05:26 GMT, "James Hicks" <nos...@forme.plz>
wrote:

<snip a life story>

As a head's up, GoD has some excellent zones to grab some gear for
casual players. In places like Qinimi, Ferubi, Riwwi and Barindu you
can probably duo and get some very nice random trash drops. Heck even
my semi-VT geared character is rolling for the range item in Ferubi.

The random trash loots are the way to go. The nameddrops are actually
worse then the rare trashloot, though much is still very usable by
many casual gamers. Especially the augments which drop like candy from
nameds in those zones (25 hp/mana/end) are a cheap way to get
upgrades.

Qinimi is the easiest and you should try that first to get a feel for
the dps, hp, procs etc of the mobs. The wanderers in the zone are
placeholders for 2 nameds, both can drop some dropable loot and aug's
IIRC. I only killed them for the BiC quest so only seen both up once
or so (never been there much aside from running to the other zones).

Then proceed to Riwwi and farm the arena dry (a guildie necro solo's a
lot there and is making nice pp with the named drops. he even wears 2
pieces himself). Leave the ghosts alone, just kill the guard golems
and all the mobs that wander into the arena to kick ghosts. Every so
often one of the wanderers is a named.

If you can take the Riwwi arena easy enough it's best to try Barindu.
I've not farmed much there myself, but the few mobs I downed were not
much harder then in Riwwi. Only singlepulling is a bit harder for a
mage :). The trashloots are a bit better then Qinimi and Riwwi, up to
VT/EP gear level I estimate.
Do NOT try the large axedude named in barindu though (yellow con).
He's damn hard, not any single group in my guild can take him (we need
at least 2 clerics + 1 patch - and that's just to keep the MT alive).

Lasty there is Ferubi. Several wanderers which move *fast*, usually 2
mobs close enough to not be able to single pull (for a
non-FD/FM/Pacify class that is) and hit harder and have more hp then
the other 3 zones. But if you can convince a group to try it here you
can get some nice exp and the occasional super drop.

My guild is farming a lot in ferubi these days (in single groups) and
we go in till about the middle of the zone, or a bit more south if
there's a mininamed up. The further you go in, the higher the mobs
become. At the zonelines (3 zonelines) mobs are all blue at lvl 65.
Somewhere around the middle you get white cons and the occasional
yellow one. South of the middle portion things start to be yellow a
lot.
My groups had 4 of the range items
(http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=26104) from there
now and 3 of the shoulders
(http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=26115) and that is
from just trashmobs. Heck, we even got one of the shoulders from the
first mob we pulled at the zoneline.

Good luck in GoD, the expansion has a bad rep, but for casuals it's
much better then you might expect. Especially since the nerfing down
of all the mobs to more reasonable hp / dps levels.

Rhand Drago'magica
Kilmir
AA# 1944

    Hmm thanks for that.

    A few people in my guild are KT flagged now even, maybe I should give
this crap a go.

news:WlkMc.13474$K53.2887@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

New expansions give you more levels, more AA's, more spells and power, so
that YOU can do content with a lot less than we needed.
VT used to require a 50 person raid with several <key classes> and still had
a good chance of wiping.  Nowadays VT can be 1-2 grouped, we had a mage tank
mini Aten about a year ago, a cleric tank the 1.something hitting aten
goos.. so im pretty sure you can tank it with a lot less than 72...

Kod'taz has gear equivalent to plane of time drops.. from random trash and 1
group named.. I eagerly await your next "I QUIT THIS SUCKS" post, because
you can't tank there either.

You want all the good stuff, without doing any of the work. Have you ever
actually worked on stuff like the VT key?

-m

    That's all true and applicable also. I wasn't trying to piss on raider
achievements Martin, I was trying to point out that trying to keep up
without being able to mount 70 person raids is *also* tough going.

    With regrets I must inform you that you are unlikely to see such a post.

    But if I can get into that zone I'll certainly try it on :)

    I'd be interested to see the reasoning you use to draw that conclusion -
care to elaborate?

    Depends, what else is like the VT key? I haven't actually worked on a VT
key, since neither of the two guilds I've been in have ever had any
intention of raiding it (and frankly, thank heavens for that, the whole
thing sounds completely shite - I can see how when it was the end game
people would bother, but when it's 3 expansions behind, just no)

    Probably the most unrewarding asshole quest I ever did was soloing
darkforge in my early 30's, after that I pretty much gave questing a big
miss. My best current item is the 1492 Tak breastplate with FT2 - that took
some doing for a guy with no raid gear, but no I wouldn't line it up next to
a multi-raided VT key.

Cheers,
James

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name "James Hicks" <nos...@forme.plz>:

I'd have to say nothing else in the entire game is like the VT key.
Some quests are miniature versions of it, but there is no quest with
the sheer raw tedium of camping 10 shards, all of which are dropping
from mobs either in inconvenient places, far below you in power, or
with grotesquely bad drop rates, or all three of those at once. And
then even then you're not done as you need a drop from a luclin
miniboss somewhere (mostly one groupable now but not originally) and a
drop from emp ssra, a raid target who himself needs four MORE drops
from rarish spawns (other than the taskmasters). All this to get into
a zone where the mobs have seemingly millions (literally millions in
the case of the bosses) of hp, some of which split into another mob
when killed, making it by far the most boring place in EQ.

Not exactly stellar design.

--

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

Bertrand Russell

] A couple of recent threads have prompted me to post this, which will be a
] summary of the steps I had to take to bring Kuloth up to a point where he
] could tank contemporary group content.

I've stayed away from, or had my character run from, anything that
/con higher than my characters. Got one War to 9, another to 7, the
rest are 4 or 5 War. Still mny characters died a few times, but I've
managed fairly well so far.

I still see players have their characters attack monsters that /con
red or yellow to them. As an example, a first level druid taking on
a fire beetle outside Freeport. Probably didn't take, or maybe they
didn't pay much attention to, the tutorial.

If as mentioned here, that the folks who play as they get time, or
they solo, are 90 percent of the players, then Sony has its head up
a black hole and shouldn't ignore their cash flow on those accounts.

JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://evergame.drivein-jim.net/ July 20, 2004 Everquest
http://www.drivein-jim.net/ July 14, 2004:
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/new.html July 24, 2004 AD&D

: Kod'taz has gear equivalent to plane of time drops.. from random trash and 1
: group named.. I eagerly await your next "I QUIT THIS SUCKS" post, because
: you can't tank there either.

While I'm not in the same state as James getting into KT isn't a stroll
through the rose garden.  1st mob he won't be able to tank on the way there
will be the Boss of sewer 1.  It sucks.   After that the other sewer trials
are mindbogglingly wimpy to the degree that a ranger can MT them.  Then
the mountain trials.  Plate melee don't tank there either really, we are
just speedbumps for the charmed hasted pooka.  Hell, I had more fun playing
around in Air with the retarted mana sucking splitters than I've had in
the mountain trials.

K

-martin said:

Hmm.  Is Emperor 1-2 groupable yet?  I've had no luck convincing my guild
going to VT is a worthwhile idea at all, but I've got two of the pieces
for emp key...  If I only had to convince 1-2 groups to get keyed, maybe I
could get there.

Besides, I really want the robe he drops. :)

[65 Coercer] Zinphandel Chianti <Prism> (Gnome) Ayonae Ro

D.J.  said:

Possible.  But it could also be that the druid is that player's 12th
character.  He may already know how to play so well that he can defeaat
the yellow /con with only moderate difficulty.  Or he may be wearing
impressive armor or buffs handed down by his main, making it trivial.  
Or he may be working on defense skillups in a rather tedious way. :)

It being a druid, most likely he just got the level 1 spell flame lick,
tried to cast it, and discovered he needed a fire beetle eye in order to
cast it...

http://69.57.151.222/archive.html?159?#29

[65 Coercer] Zinphandel Chianti <Prism> (Gnome) Ayonae Ro

    Before I comment, awesome post. =)

news:WlkMc.13474$K53.2887@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

    I'll point out places where I think you got it right, and where you got
it wrong.

    Unless you're in a guild with people your level, you're stuck with what
you get when doing pick-up. That's been true since day one, and is the
toughest part of grouping. The good news is the more grouping you do, the
more you learn who your level is an asshat and who knows their stuff. By
soloing 6 levels, you've lost some of that info. Making good contacts is an
important part of EQ.

    108 AA's and 7500 raid buffed is nothing to sneeze at. I'd consider that
very successful.

    So why go to PoI? Each expansion is playtested by people wearing all the
latest stuff from the previous expansions, so a level 40 mob from GoD is a
lot tougher than a level 40 mob from Kunark even though both likely give the
same or similar XP. Use that to your advantage. Karnor's would have been a
good place to go, especially if you had guild friends that could go with
you. It was designed with people with only Fear/Hate armour and weaponry
like the Dark Reaver, so even in Darkforge you would have made a credible
tank.

    Friends open up a lot of places that may be too low population for
pickup groups. This allowed you to pick whatever zone suited you best.

    WMBS was also pretty underpriced for the longest time, until people
who'd parsed opened their mouths. Knowing the bargains in The Bazaar can
really stretch that plat out. Note that you were gearing up off content that
was several expansions old - as intended. A lot of people skip to more
modern content, with the relatively low plat drops/item drops, and end up
high level with poor gear because of it.

    This isn't good for the game, though, because what you could do solo or
with a friend, a real soloist (65 ENC or NEC) can do several of. There's
already 65 ENCs on my server that camp most of Veksar at once. That means
content that should occupy several people to justify the development cost is
only occupying a few, and the game gets mudflated severely with several
quality droppables being farmed 24/7. It would be better if solo/duo
LDoN-style adventures were made, so Mr. Uberfarmer couldn't bottom feed his
way to glory.

shit.

    Veksar wasn't close to this, unless you're talking about the raid drops
from the dragon. Kylong Darkmail is good, but it doesn't compare to Velious
end raid drops (which would be the comparable 2nd best previous). Compare
that 12/20 1HS to a 13/20-and-procs-Avatar-for-100-ATK weapon from
Sleeper's - not close.

    Honestly, I think the stuff falling in the Sewer trials in Barindu meets
your qualifications, except that I don't believe it's duoable/soloable. But
you've got stuff in there that equals or betters LDoN Hard drops, only the
mobs generally aren't as tough as LDoN Hard.

    Were I you, the next step would be LDoN hard adventures. The XP is
fairly close to the vaunted elemental XP, and the drops are real upgrades
with some nice foci/effects. It might even be worth taking losses on LDoN
hards and just farming them for the drops.

    James

Probably. The last time we did him was with 21 people on an off raid night
and that was over a year ago. Groups are going to look a bit weird though.
You need good numbers of shamans and enchanters to slow/ mezz the adds for
the 30 minutes the fight will take.

If you can get to earth/fire/air/water they all give better reward for the
effort in raiding.

news:ce3fc3$9vq$1@brand.scrye.com...

Well i have zero knowledge of the end parts of the sewers... I don't think i
ever went deeper than 20 or so mins clearing into the zone (name farming for
spells)

But the incredibly tough boss 1, incredibly weak boss 2 isnt new to me...
Ikkinz (after kod'taz) had a simialr deal (been revamped and gimped since)
where trial 1 was almost impossible, and trial 2-3 could be beaten on the
first try/day.

Have never done a tipt or vxed that used a charmed mob, either for clearing
or killing the named.
Every tipt I did was with a warrior/paladin MA, and monk/SK as ramp tank

Aside from the pain in the ass factor of having to flag a guild.. i haven't
met too many people who didn't enjoy the tipt design/content

-m

news:ce3ouo$5dc$1@woodrow.ucdavis.edu...

2 groups sure. for lesser than time, maybe 3 groups.

we've had some whacky pickup raids, where shamans tanked 2 jail mobs each,
just 1 cleric/druid to heal the MA etc :)   Havent been back since GoD (or
even for a long time in PoP) but its fair to say every new expansion halves
or more the required forces (e.g 2 people/3char kills of king tormax now, 1
group in PoP, and 3-4 groups in SoL)

-m

news:KM7Nc.17622$K53.12751@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

Oh its ok, i don't try to be one of those that, the "we had it harder in my
day! your achievement means squat" type people

The point you missed though, whilst originally the zones would of required
huge numbers, as the game has moved on, the requirements have dramatically
dropped.  YOU in your level of gear and guild could be doing those places
successfully with 30, not 70.

well you use an inability to field 70 people as a reason/excuse for not
doing raidzone_01 or mob_02

Well the reason why people do it 3 years later... is because now they can
clear the zone in a few hours, with just 30 or so velious geared people.
Requiring high-end Luclin gear then no, its not necessarily good value
compared to jumping into PoP... but coming from some place like Velious,
well its easily attainable loot with good hp/mana/effects/focus, in huge
quantities, without a massive online presence.

Btw the quest may sound shit... but imagine being part of a guild supporting
each other to key up... camping parts for others, keeping them company for
the hell camps, in addition to your own.. keys for needed alts, r/l partners
etc.. that was the definition of ultra shit :(

<-- did it 3 times for alt/wife.. and countless times for 1/4 of the guild

Like Ben said, it was a shithole plan :)

Well post a magelo. I bet theres a whole wardobe of gear we could recommend
from mobs that would take *you* less than 3 groups!

-m

hughes said:

Hmm.  How many adds we talkin' here?

Yea, that's what people keep telling me.  But I've yet to see the
Elemental drop that will let me in Vex Thal, much less get all those @#$%!
Shards of Luclin out of my bank.  I started a quest, I wanna bloody well
finish it. :)

[65 Coercer] Zinphandel Chianti <Prism> (Gnome) Ayonae Ro

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name ez064...@veni.ucdavis.edu (Remington Stone):

Eight I think, four unmezzable, and you can't kill them. While a high
end GoD guild would probably be able to do with two groups (slowly), a
guild who would still be getting upgrades from VT would be foolish to
go with less than twice that and probably should have rather more.

--

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

Bertrand Russell

news:1ZeNc.120366$eO.55772@edtnps89...

    Thankee... don't think anyone's ever said that about one of my posts
before.

    In retrospect, I agree that it was poor strategy at the time, however,
it got me to 52 probably faster than I otherwise would have got there (I
really WAS sick of grouping), and it did put me in a rather weak situation
which was then a nice challenge to get out of :)

    Because I had been shown it and realised the experience was almost
double what I would make anywhere else, and I knew that I could gear up a
little and then tank there. I guess I was also determined that being a tank,
and therefore gear-dependant, would not lock me out of the faster
experience.

    Karnors seemed to be worse experience than soloing - hence why I did 52
solo in the dreadlands instead of going to karnors at 50 like everyone else.

    I suppose you can read a lot into that, but I did try other zones as
well - soloing in maiden's eye was abysmally slow and not very challenging,
and non-planar groups tended to consist of all kinds of people who couldn't
make it in the planes (as well as people who could, but didn't want to for
whatever reason of course)

    Yeah, I wanted one very early on, having done the maths myself, but
unfortunately when we bought the price was rising again because others had
cottoned on - still it's been worth the money, only just replaced the thing
the other night.

    That is a problem with the necro and enchanter classes, and it should
not be worked around by denying content and drops to single and small groups
of other classes.

    I found that for a hybrid tank the drops were right up there - I haven't
done a comparison with top-end velious, but certainly drops such as the
ritual talisman of fate, boots of the kunzar wanderer, the nice plate helm
etc were the best I could lay hands on until LDoN.

    Maybe I don't actually care how the drops compare to the top level
stuff, but I do expect to be able to group upgrades to my group-drop gear in
each expansion. It looks like I can (barely) do this with GoD so maybe I'm
happy with it, time will tell.

    Having only done one of the Sewer trials, I have limited scope for
comment, but I can say that although the trials themselves might be
unwinnable for a duo, the shammy/SK duo I used to form would crush those
mobs like the bugs they are. Named might be a challenge tho :>

    I look forward to seeing some drops on the other trials :)

    I've done a few HarDoN's and have had one upgrade drop so far. I mainly
like them for the exp and the huge points - when elemental level gear lands
on LDoN merchants I will probably be HarDoNing my way to it in short order.

    I kinda got burned out on LDoN's though, there was a loooong period
where we didn't have the firepower or armour to tackle the hards, and
getting even four pieces of LDoN gear at 51pts/adventure inevitably means
some insanely repetitive work. Not a good peice of design, that.

Cheers,
James

news:2mlo12FoaojvU1@uni-berlin.de...

    The requirements have dropped, but so have the relative rewards - to the
point where (for example) almost no guild is making a serious attempt to key
up for VT - there are simply better ways to get that level of gear now, even
though the barriers are lower due to everyone being higher level and already
having crap they stumbled on in Veksar, or bought from a McLDoN McMerchant.

    I guess this has as much to do with the rate of mudflation as anything -
and it probably pisses me off more than it does you - but the fact is that
most of the raid targets my guild can now hit, are no longer worth hitting.
I can't tell you how pissed off I was when we finally started hitting THO.
*just* at that point it got to the stage where I no longer coveted his FT3
helm, after 40 levels of drooling over it and praying for one day...

    And by the time we can smack past the 70-person blockage in PoP and
access the stuff we could probably drop NOW, we will be level 70 nutcases
wearing GoD drops and bazaar catch-ups that make elemental gear barely worth
the effort, if at all.

    But I must stress: I accept most of that as the lot of the
non-uberguildie. The parts I have problems with are the 70-person raids
blocking access to the 30-person raids or single-group content. The raiding
content should be in order of difficulty, and at no point should somone who
can't mount raids be locked out of more than one or two zones per expansion.
If you gotta key off half a zone, make most of that half questable.

    So how does my taking part in a 40 person raid differ in effort from
your taking part in a 70 person raid?

    Hmm, there is no such thing as a velious or a luclin geared person
anymore, you are aware of that, no?

    Yeah, huge part of the reason why *nobody* is doing it anymore.

    http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=794046

    The AA's and aug's might be a bit off but the gear pieces are at least
there and the numbers seem close to accurate.

Cheers,
James

Ben Sisson <ilkhanikeDIES...@yahoo.ca> wrote in
news:tkibg0t0088m71erbhtf3u3supk4hjffjv@4ax.com:

Yep, 8 adds, four unmezzable.  As I recall, some are unslowable as well,
they may be the mezzable ones though.  If you kill the adds, they repop
in 30 seconds as I recall.

--
On Erollisi Marr in <Sanctuary of Marr>
Elder Graeme Faelban, Barbarian Prophet of 65 seasons
Tainniel Fleabane, Halfling Warrior of 32 seasons
Giluven, Wood Elf Druid of 29 seasons
Graeniel, High Elf Enchanter of 25 seasons

: Have never done a tipt or vxed that used a charmed mob, either for clearing
: or killing the named.
: Every tipt I did was with a warrior/paladin MA, and monk/SK as ramp tank

There's a bigass difference between a plate tank with 10k+hp unbuffed and
buttloads of +shielding and a 9.6k buffed no +shielding plate tank. :)

Our lead GoD exploration team is  War, Pal, Shm, Dru, Enc, Rog (Notice all
the healing redundancy) any they don't try to actually tank stuff but
use Mr. Pooka to do the work.  I'm in team 2 and when we dropped a DPS class
for a Dru things got way way easier.  Team 2 is War, Clr, Dru, Nec, Enc, Rng
just for information purposes.  Our first trip to the mountains was kinda
ugly but that's mostly a matter of getting a feel for the mobs and reacting
appropriately. T2 will get into KT eventually.  May have to sub in a Rog to
do a SoS run for the win but it'll get there.  We will use pooka's for the
DPS tho.  Wins for both Team1 and Team2 just are not going to happen without
them.

: Aside from the pain in the ass factor of having to flag a guild.. i haven't
: met too many people who didn't enjoy the tipt design/content

I'm mostly pissed off at the existance of GoD so take my comments on the
content there with a cow-lick of salt. :)  That said, there is some fun stuff
there. CoW event in Barindu is kinda fun, especially the mayhem on pulling
the non-mez non-charm golem things before going after the snakes.  Zum Votal
is a fun mob to kill as well with some pretty nice drops.  Our raid leader
doesn't want to try the Ferubi Packmaster quite yet but hell, I think learing
how hard it would stomp us into paste would be informative.  Our 1 win
at the Qinimi Dome event turned kinda south since 30s after the win we all
got ported out so all the drops got wasted.  Talk about suck.

K

] D.J.  said:
] >I still see players have their characters attack monsters that /con
] >red or yellow to them. As an example, a first level druid taking on
] >a fire beetle outside Freeport. Probably didn't take, or maybe they
] >didn't pay much attention to, the tutorial.
]
] Possible.  But it could also be that the druid is that player's 12th
] character.  He may already know how to play so well that he can defeaat

Thats possible to, but he appeared to die rather often for a twinked
character.

I created a shaman character just to try one out. I learned rather
quickly to keep that blunt weapon handy.

] Or he may be working on defense skillups in a rather tedious way. :)

Very tedious. Died often. I guess that will increase the defense
skill. :-)

JimP.
--
http://www.linuxgazette.net/ Linux Gazette
http://evergame.drivein-jim.net/ July 20, 2004 Everquest
http://www.drivein-jim.net/ July 14, 2004:
http://crestar.drivein-jim.net/new.html July 24, 2004 AD&D

A thousand monkeys banging on keyboards posted the following under the
name "James Hicks" <nos...@forme.plz>:

I agree with that 100%.

--

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

Bertrand Russell

news:CPmNc.18558$K53.11132@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

    A SHM, DRU, MAG, BST could also all solo camps in there, just not as
many at once. We used to have a druid in guild that would go to Droga on
server-up, hit tracking, and kill any named in the place that was up. It's
tough to design content that level-appropriate people can duo but which
cannot be soloed by someone of higher level. Far better to keep the higher
levels out, and the best system for that is LDoN.

    James