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If you're finally returning to EverQuest from a different MMO, or you're a brand new player, this guide is for you.
Table of Contents:
Originally by Pilsner of the SomethingAwful forums. Reposted here with permission. Various edits by RedBot & Maskoi. If you'd like to edit or include a section please reply, we could use the help!
EverQuest (EQ) is the legendary MMORPG that was one of the first big successes of its genre. Launched in early 1999, EQ set the standards that still to an extent live on today, with a class-based, level-based, monster killing and item-hunting game featuring massive timesinks.
EQ is the game where real-life phone chains were set up to alert guild members of a boss mob that spawned in the middle of the night. It is the game where people (me) spent 100 real days of played time over the course of one year to hit the max level, and where 10 minutes of sitting down, waiting for mana to regenerate betweeen kills was acceptable solo gameplay. It was the game where actual girls roleplayed sex slaves that let other players shit on their face for in-game money. It was a game where traveling from one end of the world to the other could take hours on foot, and where pretty much doing anything worthwhile was a massive undertaking. It was a game where dying at high levels wiped out several hours worth of xp grinding, and where not finding your corpse again meant losing everything you had on you. It was a game of the most quirky and weird exploits and bugs, and unintended consequences of the laissez-faire development style the game enjoyed.
EQ was a game that dumped players into a large world, in their race's home city, with merely a note in their backpack, suggesting they go see their guild master. From then on, there was no hand-holding. There were no in-game maps, no quest journal, and merely venturing out in the newbie area and attacking one of the weakest monsters might end up getting you killed due to an unlucky streak, or because another monster joined the fight. There was no set-in-stone leveling path, and no automated quest system. You had to work for everything: Getting your spells, travelling, looting and selling, training your skills, and working on tradeskills where you lost your ingredients if you weren't skilled enough or tried the wrong combination.
It was also a game with a strong, small town like community, many friendly and helpful people, and a level of in-game patience, helpfulness and socializing which will never again be matched in a mainstream game in the future, due to changes in mentality and attitude.
Ancient screenshot of early EQ
EQ has gone through a ton of expansions since its inception, and has changed substantially. Many of the above horror stories are no longer relevant in the current gameplay, and great improvements have been made especially to make travel faster, dying impose less of a penalty, and to make progression, grouping and raiding more readily available. Still, many fundamental aspects of the game remain the same, and returning players will feel at home.
Screenshot of modern EQ, House of Thule expansion (customized UI). Those wasps would wipe out a raid of 100 players from the early era.
Here are the EQ expansions:
A quick rundown of the last 8 expansions:
Why play EverQuest?
EQ is an old game with a huge amount of content to explore. The graphics are outdated, but the atmosphere and feel of the game is very different from newer MMORPGs, most of which EQ has inspired. A few main features of EQ:
Free to Play, subscription model and how to download EQ
EQ is, as of March 2012, "free to play" using a hybrid model. There is a 3-tier subscription model, with the entry-level being free, the middle tier ("Silver") which historically cost $5 to activate yet remains without monthly cost, and the top tier ("Gold") costing $15 per month as it always has. A gold sub is exactly like a regular sub has always been, with a few extra benefits. Gold accounts downgrade to Silver status when no longer paid with funds or Krono.
Go to everquest.com and click the PLAY FREE! button to download the EQ installer and get started
After running the installer, you should be presented with the EQ LaunchPad application, which will, after creating an account and logging in, automatically download all the necessary content. This can take several hours due to the large amount of data.
By starting a free account, you automatically get access to all expansions up to and including the House of Thule expansion, only lacking the latest expansion (Veil of Alaris). Expansion-wise, this is more than enough to get the full EQ experience. However, the free and silver models are fairly restrictive, and should not be viewed as a viable way of playing the game at higher levels. You will be restricted in the classes you can pick, your inventory size, allowed money amount and alternate advancement. That being said, you should still be able to explore and get a feel for all the fundamentals of the game, and should give you many weeks of free enjoyment at the very least. It will also be great for players who just want to get their nostalgia fix.
Read all about the F2P model here
Notable restrictions are (free/silver):
The system also works in the way that if you let your gold sub run out, it is converted to a free account, allowing you to keep playing your characters, regardless of race/class, with slightly diminished spell power and reduced inventory. You will keep access to all your AA abilities, but will be unable to earn further AA than the cap allows. You will never lose any items by downgrading.
New and returning players: Picking a server, class and race
EQ has branched out over the years. Here are the ways to play EQ that are different from the regular servers.
The character creation screen
Choosing a class
All classes fundamentally play and feel like they did in ancient times. If you start a new character you will hardly see any difference, for better and for worse. The good news is that all classes have had a slight homogenization, meaning that other classes than warriors can tank, other classes than monks can pull, and other classes than clerics can heal well. Hybrids are also far from the crap they once were. It is nowhere near the homogenization that has taken place in WoW though, and classes still feel very unique.
If you're a brand new player, here are some fundamentals of the EQ class system. The four archetypes in EQ are:
Pure melee have neither spells nor mana, but use a resource called Endurance to execute some of their special abilities. Think of it as melee mana. You will be able to do the majority of your damage and use most abilities endlessly without using endurance at all, and at high levels, you get abilities to regenerate your endurance. They can basically keep churning forever. Instead of spells, they get various insta-cast special attacks and self-buffs to increase their damage.
Hybrids are a mix of melee and spell casting. They don't use endurance, but mana for certain abilities that either enhance their melee attacks, or make them a little closer to a spell caster, such as casting damage or healing spells while fighting, adding procs to their weapons, or casting buffs and debuffs. Bards are extra special in this category, as they have songs instead of spells, all of which apply effects with a short duration, but they can be cast over and over and mixed with eachother to do many things at once.
Priests are fundamentally healers, but with varying side-roles and all have the ability to buff other players and to debuff mobs. They do not melee.
Pure casters do not melee either and have the weakest defenses against melee, but have the most powerful detrimental spells and the best pets that fight along them.
If you're familiar with the classes in EQ, many things have changed over the years that might help you decide for and against a class.
So, any class you desire should basically be good to go, although if you're looking to further narrow it down, players usually mention the following classes when the topic comes up. I'm going to partly quote friends and post second-hand reports, as I haven't played all classes.
Here are some notes on the remaining classes, as i know it:
1) There are many bitter veteran players who won't stop posting on other forums about how their class sucks, hasn't gotten anything cool in the last several expansions and is crap compared to class X, Y and Z. In fact, I bet any class forum can contain these types of posts. Does not compute.
2) Many vocal people bitching about their class see the game from a raid point of view, and thus purely see class balance as a matter of having the highest damage output or "bringing something to the raid" via utility. End-game raiding in EQ is still not something you walk into with a pick up group; it's for guilds, and you'll need to apply to a guild and endure raiding hours and DKP and all that. This thread is based on the assumption that you will solo for the first many levels, and then do a mix of soloing, multiboxing and/or grouping at higher levels.
3) If you see damage parses (dps numbers), beware that people like to post bursts from a short battle, where they blow everything they have. Furthermore, they will be raid buffed to the teeth and be in a group full of synergizing classes. These number are pointless if you're trying to find the best class if you like damage.
Choosing a race and other character creation options
Race
Race and character creation matters very little today. In fact, no content since Kunark has had significant content where race really mattered. There are no race xp penalties any longer. A few races stand out:
Picking a neutral or good race (see "Alignment" column in this table) will allow you to more easily explore the old, classic cities, plus you will likely be visiting Freeport a fair amount for tradeskills and a few quests. A few old epic quests will also require some faction grinding if you're evil. Alternatively, if you like the evil cities, pick an evil race and go slaughter the elf guards. Iksars are hated almost everywhere in the classic world.
Stat allocation
Stat allocation doesn't matter. Even at medium levels, your regular stats (STR, DEX, etc.) will be massively capped, rendering your choices here pointless. However, for the sake of doing the best you can, put most points into STA and the remaining (if any) into your class' main stat. This will be INT for pure casters, WIS for priests and hybrids, and STR for melee classes. Yet still, it won't matter in the long run.
Deity (religion)
Deity (religion) doesn't matter much either; it can change your con (level of aggression) towards some of the classic cities and factions a bit up or down, and determines what kind of Cultural armor you can wear. However, all cultural armor is equal, so it's just flavor. The only deity that people still talk about is choosing Innoruuk if you're a troll shaman, as they can get a necklace with a snare via questing. However, it's not very useful at higher levels.
Home city
Here you can pick either Crescent Reach or the classic home town for your race, such as Ak'anon for gnomes. Crescent Reach is a city and zone from The Serpent's Spine (TSS) expansion, which added a new race (Drakkin) along with an entire slew of zones designed for more modern and focused leveling from level 1 to maximum. If you're a non-gate class, picking either home town can make a tiny difference, as it determines where you end up when you use your Origin (EQ's "Hearthstone") ability. The run from Crescent Reach's teleport spot to the nearest PoK port stone might be a little longer or a little shorter than the run from the teleport spot in your race's classic city to its PoK stone. At worst, you'll waste 30 seconds or so every time you teleport, so won't worry too much. If you're in doubt, I recommend picking your race's original city.
Tutorial
If the Tutorial button is pressed down (default), you will start off in a tutorial area which teaches you the ropes and gives you a focused, quest-driven experience from level 1-10. After enduring some awful RP and a simple quest that instantly dings you lvl 2, you are transported to a cave with bankers, merchants, spell merchants and quest NPCs that guide you through some of the basics of the game and send you on quests that give you good xp and a little gear and money. I recommend this to new players, as it's a relaxed area with easy xp.
Getting started and leveling
The screen you'll see when entering EQ through the tutorial
Entering the game and getting a mercenary
When entering the game through the tutorial, go through the first quest to ding lvl 2, and get transported to the tutorial cave with all the NPCs. The first thing you should do is get a mercenary. If you are satisfied with a boring Human mercenary, you can hire it right there in the tutorial, from the Mercenary Liaison NPC (human in silver armor). If you want one of a different race, it's time for a slight detour. To leave the tutorial, Hail the barbarian NPC named Arias right where you enter and type 'ready to leave' in the chat, and you will be teleported to Plane of Knowledge (PoK). You are now in the main hub of the EQ world, where all players gather to bind, sell and buy, do their trade skills, teleport to other parts of the world, bank, or just AFK.
Now open the Find window (Ctrl+F) and look for NPCs called 'XXX Mercenary Liaison', for example, 'Dark Elf Mercenary Liason'. Pick a race that you would like to have your merc show as (female dark elf w00t), then click on the NPC name, and a glowing path should lead you to the liaison. Right-click either the male or female version (determines the sex of the merc you buy), and a box pops up. First, pick the "Journeyman Tier 1" type merc, as they are the best. F2P players will only have access to Apprentice rank mercenaries - pick the highest tier you can. Second, pick the Tank role mercenary, as this will give you smooth sailing solo for the first 60-70 levels without requiring any healing on the merc at all. Tank mercs are immensely powerful and can solo 3-4 mobs at once for you. They can handle red con mobs without breaking a sweat. The stance (agressive/passive/etc) doesn't matter and can be changed later. Click Hire, and boom, you now have a killing machine at your disposal. A small thing to note is that they will not hold agro well at the beginning, and mobs will be hitting you. This gradually gets better, and at around level 30, the tank merc will be like a monster magnet. If you want to let the tank merc take the blows, simply step back out of melee range and the tank merc should be the one getting hit.
You can only own one mercenary at a time (until much later in the game, or by paying real money for extra slots), but the tank merc will pretty much carry you to level 70.
Note: If you've decided to skip the tutorial and start in Crescent Reach, there is a mercenary liaison NPC in Crescent Reach, in the big hut with all the class trainers in the starting area. All of the classic home cities also have liaisons.
Note: A merc counts as a group member, and as such eats experience. When it's you alone with the merc, it will take approximately 40% of the xp (due to group bonuses). They are still worth it at low levels due to the overpoweredness of tank mercs, but at level 60+, start considering if the merc is actually speeding up your killing enough to be worth it. This will depend on your class. Keep in mind that mercs are safety nets that can prevent wipes and allow you to survive pulls of multiple mobs, so it's not just about xp per mob killed and kill time.
At around level 65-70, the superpower of tank mercs start to wane as they can't survive as many mobs at once any longer without healing. Here, consider either going with a cleric merc (synergizes particularly well with a melee class), or look into the damage dealing mercs. If you can heal, a tank merc might still be a good idea. If you don't want to use a merc at all in your grinding, at least get a cleric merc and keep it stashed away for when you need a resurrection or need to fight a tough mob.
Read more abouts mercs here: EQ Zam guide and Almar's EQ merc guide
Hiring a mercenary in PoK
You're now set with the merc. If you want to go back to the tutorial, log out (type /camp or click the 'Camp (Exit)' button), then make sure the Tutorial button is pressed in at the character selection screen. Log in, and you'll be back in the tutorial. Now go through the tutorial as you please and start enjoying the game as a clueless newbie!
leveling
In spite of its name, EQ has never rewarded any significant amount of XP for questing until very recently, but quests have instead mainly been a source of certain powerful items. However, the TSS expansion as previously described actually does contain a full quest path from level 1-70 that you can follow if you wish. Most of them are basic kill, collect and explore quests and aren't really efficient. If you prefer to quest, go ahead and check them out. The path starts in Crescent Reach and mostly follows the zone path I'm going to recommend for mob killing.
Newbie (twinked and buffed) fighting in Crescent Reach. Who can name the twink items?
EQ has a concept of Hot Zones, which are selected zones, rotated yearly or bi-yearly, which give additional xp for mobs you kill in them. The bonus is, I estimate, roughly around 30%, so they're often worth going to.
View a list of current hot zones here
At level 10, you will be done with the tutorial zone. You should now leave the tutorial (finish up the quests if you have any), and again say 'ready to leave' to Arias to get to PoK.
Soulbinding
Once you're back in PoK, go to the eastern side of the zone, find the (Soulbinder) NPC, and tell her 'bind my soul'. You are now bound here, and will respawn in the same spot when you die. If you're a spellcaster, you will get a spell called Bind Affinity later on, that will allow you to bind in any city you please.
Suggested leveling path
Here is a rough recommended path for leveling. Don't take it literally, explore other zones if you wish as there's plenty of easy xp to be had in many, many zones. leveling at least up to 60 is so fast that you won't feel slowed down regardless of where you go.
1-10: Tutorial or the same as 10-25. Alternative: Steamfont Mountains near Ak'anon and the windmills, or any classic newbie area.
1-25 or 10-25: Crescent Reach (CR), the newbie area east of the city. Start in the southeast just outside of the city and work your way north up to the skeleton camp. Lots of fast-respawning mobs and a short path to a city. Alternative: Castle Mistmoore is good from level 20-30.
25-35/40: Blightfire Moors, just next to CR. Many camps with easy mobs. Alternative: The Overthere in Kunark is perfect from 30-40.
35-50: Goru'kar Mesa: Just north of Blightfire Moors, this zone also has some good camps and easy mobs all over the place. If you want a more classic experience, Karnor's Castle can take you from 40-50.
50-65: Grieg's End in Luclin is a mostly deserted dungeon with hundreds of mobs lined up for fast killing and a tight level range, good for 50-60. Alternative: The Hole is a dungeon with an innate experience bonus, good vendor trash drops and fairly easy mobs as it's an ancient zone. At level 50, start in the upper areas, and when you're level 60, you can start doing the lower tunnel/castle area for very decent xp up to lvl 70. Downside: Tunnel area may be camped and doesn't support more than a few players.
65-70: Continue The Hole lower area (great place for AA at lvl 70) or go to Sunderock Springs (hot zone), another outdoors TSS zone.
70-80: Paw in South Karana is a small dungeon with easy mobs all over the place that are very good grind material for non-kiting classes. Alternatively, The Steppes, another outdoors hot zone in TSS. Alternatively, Plane of Fire is an open zone with tons of mobs, ripe for swarming and headshotting for certain classes.
80-85: Direwind Cliffs, yet another outdoors hot zone, or Loping Plains next to Steamfont Mountains. Many more options here, and you are now eligible for grouping in House of Thule content.
85-90: Ashengate, a hot zone dungeon. Alternatively, HoT content.
Somewhere in your 60's, you should be well versed in the game's basics and ready to take a little break from the XP race if you wish, and explore some of the other things you can do in EQ (see later section).
As you level, you will get windows popping up with suggested places to level. Take these with a grain of salt, as they might be dangerous, crap xp, or way out there.
If you want to level via an old school route, such as via classic Faydwer/Antonica/Kunark zones and dungeons, that will also be totally viable, just a tad slower. You will be able to handle the zones solo with your mercenary, and they will most likely be void of other players. The only downsides are greater level range of mobs and longer respawn times in some places. The upside is of course the nostalgia. I recently leveled two new characters up purely through older zones such as Steamfont, Mistmoore, Overthere, Karnor's and Sebilis, and I had no problems at all.
Three goons in their 40s leveling in an old school zone (Karnor's Castle in Kunark)
For more inspiration, see Allakhazam's zone level chart here
Getting more bags
Already when you've saved up a few platinum, or have had some donated to you, you can easily buy some bigger bags. A gnome NPC in PoK named Nelin Signus, located in the northern trader building, sells Deluxe Toolbox, a 10-slot container, for a bit over 1 platinum each. You should quickly buy several of these so you aren't so restricted in your inventory space. Note that in EQ, it's a good idea to keep at least one base inventory slot free (just put a piece of food or whatever you want in it instead), as several quests throughout the game will give you a container to combine certain quest items in, and bags naturally can't be opened while they're inside another bag. But, in today's EQ you can store empty bags within other bags!
Buying bigger bags from the gnome merchant in PoK
If you have enough platinum to spend (around 5k total), I would advise investing in the new 14-slot bags, that are all nearly weightless and have 100% WR. Search the bazaar for "Unexpanded Tailored Legendary", and buy any type that suits you. Now go buy Abu-Kar's Arcane Solution from any (Tailoring Supplies) merchant, combine the solution and the bag in a loom or sewing kit, and bam, you have a 14-slot bag.
Obtaining spells
Spells in EQ must be bought, quested for, or obtained as loot. Almost all essential spells from level 1-85 can be purchased from merchants in PoK. Go to the giant library building in the center of PoK and look for merchants that sell your class' spells.
With the F2P patch, players can now purchase all fundamental spells from level 1-85 from merchants. This is a massive change, as before, there was a very large void of spells between level 60 and 85 where spells were very tough and time-consuming to hunt down. From level 71 and up, all spells have three ranks, the first being a solo/merchant-bought rank, the second group-obtained, and the third raid-obtained. As mentioned, you will only be able to buy rank 1 of the level 70-85 spells, but these will carry you just fine.
A short rundown of the spell ranges, for historic purposes, if you want to save some platinum, or in case you want to look into higher ranks of level 71+ spells.
Search for your class' spells on Allakhazam here
Skills
Almost everything you do in EQ is skill based, from swinging swords to casting spells of various types. On your character pane, click the Skills button to see an overview of all your abilities. Certain skills can be hotkeyed - click on the skill, then on the Make Hotkey button, and place the button on your hotbar. There are both passive skills that enhance your fighting or spellcasting capabilities, and activated skills such as Disarm, Begging, Forage, Bind Wound and Disarm Trap. Most (but not all) of these are fairly useless. Monks base a good amount of their damage on their kicks, and all melee should use kick and/or bash when in combat.
Melee will generally find it easy to keep up with skills, although if you get to level 30 with a 1H Blunt weapon then suddenly switch to 2H Blunt or 1H Slashing, you will spend some time working on the new skill.
Spellcasters have it slightly worse, and some of the schools (Abjuration and Conjuration for example) will take you lots of practice casting to skill up.
New melee combat skills are taught to you automatically as you level. Around level 30 or so, you should have all your fundamental skills, such as Dodge, Riposte, Dual Wield, etc., depending on your class.
Dying
Dun-dun-dunnnnn. LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
EQ was historically a brutal game to die in, not only losing a significant chunk of experience, but your corpse with all your items and inventory was left where you died, and you respawned naked at your bind point. You now respawn with all your gear and inventory, leaving only the experience loss (about 8% of a level) as the penalty. There are a few easy ways to deal with this on your own now, without having to pester a cleric:
1) If you have a healer (cleric) mercenary, you can travel back to your corpse, and providing you're not in combat, it will cast the best resurrection spell it has on you, which will restore 96% of the lost experience, from level 56 and onwards. At lower levels it will restore less xp.
2) If you are unable or unwilling to get to your corpse, you can go to the Guild Lobby, where Corpse Summoner NPCs can summon your corpse to you in exchange for a token that costs a little platinum. With the corpse at your feet, you can have it resurrected either by your mercenary, another player's mercenary, or a real player with the ability to res.
3) Use the "Expedient Recovery" veteran AA, which summons your corpse and does a 100% res. See later section about veterean rewards.
Improving the user interfaces, maps and common customization
User Interface
The default UI you are presented with when logging into EQ for the first time is a bit of an abomination. EQ has a simple UI engine with no scripting, merely a large set of controls that can be re-skinned, re-arranged, moved and resized. Some things can be changed via XML files in the EQ \uifiles directory, some things can be changed in-game. Notably, you can move and resize any window, which is nice.
You can browse custom UIs (or just separate UI elements if you wish) on eqinterface.com. Note that EQ UIs break over time as the default UI goes through changes, so take note of the date on a UI before you go wild over it. Some pieces here and there will still function after several years, and you can also hack the XML files yourself to patch them up. A few complete UI packages:
ZlizUI - My own UI compilation, Rain of Fear compatible. Minimalist and functional.
WatUI - minimalistic and clean (partly broken with RoF)
Sparxx
VertUI
AYA
Ang's
Sha'kahr interface - artsy.
Example of the WatUI. Note that all windows can be freely moved around, and hotbar row/column configuration changed in-game
As of writing this, a major patch has just been released that breaks many UIs. It may take some time for UI authors to catch up, although some UIs will undoubtedly be left in the dust and never work again.
View a guide on installing an EQ UI here
Some UIs are more than just skins and recolors, and often rearrange the contents of many windows, such as the character panel. Some are for the worse, some for the better. For example, with the WatUI, I don't like his bazaar window, merchant window, bank window and several more. If you're unhappy with a UI window's changed layout, simply go to your everquest directory, then to \uifiles\<ui_name> directory (for example c:\games\everquest\uifiles\watui) and delete the .xml file that corresponds to the UI window. As an example, delete the file called "EQUI_BazaarWnd.xml" and reload the UI to make the default bazaar window show up (which will still be re-skinned to match the rest).
Maps
The game ships with simple maps, and fans have taken the time to improve the maps a bit, adding NPC names and locations of named spawns and quest objectives. The main site for EQ maps is Mapfiend. Go to the download page, select "ALL Maps", and click the Download Map Pack button. Extract the contents of the zipfile to a new subdirectory in the \maps directory (for example: "c:\games\everquest\maps\mapfiend"). Once logged in, choose the subdirectory you made at the top of the map window.
The map window can be resized, and while the map won't really scale as you'd expect, it will allow you to zoom in and view more of the map without it being tiny and gritty to look at.
You can customize maps yourself with the in-game map tool (click the icon with the sextant), or hack the text-based map files.
Enabling the classic character models
With the Luclin expansion, the main character models were remodelled, largely to the dismay of the community. Many feel they look out of place and have terrible animations. Thankfully, the new (also called Luclin models) and old models co-exist, and you can re-enable the use of the old ones. There are two ways to disable the new models:
1) In the EQ launchpad, after logging in, there's a little gear icon in the lower left corner. Click it, choose Game Configuration, and a box pops up. Click Next, and in the next form you can disable all the new models.
Disabling the Luclin models
2) Go to your EQ directory and open the "eqclient.ini" file. Here, you should see a list of lines like this:
UseLuclinHumanMale=TRUE
UseLuclinHumanFemale=TRUE
Replace all TRUE with FALSE, save it, and (re)start EQ.
Note: You will not be able to use most mounts unless you have the Luclin models enabled for your race. The only race I've found that isn't subjected to this rule are humans, and models made in newer times such as frogloks and drakkin only have one model. Alternatively, you can use certain illusion items (like AoN) to still be allowed to mount, but you'll lose the illusion and mount every time you zone. Particularly if you're a spellcaster, I recommend sucking it up and dealing with the new models, as mounts are extremely useful for you. If you use modern mounts (non-Horses), you can keep using the old horse and elemental (magician pet) models.
Common UI niggles and FAQ
The default key for opening the options window is O. Here you'll find a myriad of options and buttons to dig through.
Q: How do I copy the UI layout and settings betweeen characters?
A: Go to options, click the "Copy Layout" button in the top left corner, and choose the UI layout for another character to copy. It'll takes around 10 seconds for the copy to complete.
Q: How do I disable the Voice Chat bar?
A: Go to options, click the Voice tab, and click the "Disable Voice Chat" checkbox.
Q: How do I customize the hotbars?
A: Right-click the rim of a hotbar and options will show to create and alter the hotbars. You can also resize the hotbars by dragging the corner like a Microsoft Windows window, in order to rearrange it to have a different row/column layout instead of 1x12.
Q: Help, I can only load 8 spells into my spell bar!:
A: This is part of the challenge of being a spell caster in EQ, choosing your spells before you enter battle. You can invest in AAs to increase this maximum to 12 later on. You can also save and load sets of spells by right-clicking on the button at the bottom of the spell bar.
Q: I accidentally pressed some button and a UI window disappeared.
A: Go to options, Keys tab, and select the UI category from the combobox. Dig through the list to find the binding for the UI element you have closed by accident. You can sort the rows in the list by clicking the column headers, either sorting by description or keybinding.
Alternate Advancement (AA)
At level 51, you can begin funnelling between 0 and 100% your experience gains into a secondary xp pool, which is called AA for short. This adds a whole extra level (metaphorically speaking) to the game, as you can continue earning AA experience even at maximum level. As you earn points, you can spend them on abilities that can either be passive or activated abilities that can do all sorts of stuff, like enhance your spell casting or melee attacks, allow you to cast new spells for no mana, give you more spell slots, extra hitpoints or stats, and much, much more. Most AA abilities are ranked (buy rank 1, then rank 2, etc.), some are tiered (must buy ability X before you can buy Y), and all ranks are level- and expansion-restricted.
Google "everquest <class> aa guide" and you should be able to find some good starting tips. Beware of outdated info, note the date.
At level 51, the first AA you should grind points for and buy is called Innate Run Speed (on the General tab), 3 ranks for 1 point each. This allows you to run faster without speed buffs, which is gold. From there, it depends on your class which is best.
When to take a break from leveling and grind AA is a debated topic. You will not suddenly find yourself useless because you have levelled too high and not picked up enough AA, but there is at least a couple hundred AA for each class that are "mandatory", in the sense that they, for very little cost, greatly enhance your class and add immensely useful abilities or power.
A good spot to stop a bit and grind AAs is level 59 (or 60 if you wish), as some of the first core AAs from the system's introduction open up. For example, monks can reduce the cooldown time on their Feign Death ability at lvl 59, rangers get Archery enhancing AAs, etc. Keep your eye out for essential AAs on the way, and at level 70, stop and go through the list and see if anything useful opens up. A very good opportunity again opens up at level 80, where you can, as earlier described, equip some of the latest, super-powered gear, which will make you very powerful against current mobs and allow you to grind quickly. At level 80 I would recommend grinding out at least 400-500 AA points, depending on your class, some may even want to grind twice that.
There's no online calculator that I know of to get an easy overview of your class' AAs. The best thing you can do is to save up 12 AA points, then click the "Can Purchase" button in the AA window to filter out any AAs that you are ineligible for. Until very late in the game, no AA costs more than 12 points, so this should show you all available at your current level. You can also filter by expansion to get a rough overview of AAs available from certain level ranges, but some AAs are sneaky and require a lower level than the expansion was made for.
AA has been made very easy to grind these days. There is a sliding scale AA xp bonus implemented that gives you a 500% bonus when you start out, and scales down to 0% bonus at 2500 AA points. 2500 points is a LOT, and perhaps with the exception of Shadow Knight, you should be able to utilize your class to its fullest potential at around 1000-1500 AA at high levels, some even earlier. Shamans for example have it really easy and can get by fine with 600 at maximum level in group content.
For the same reason, be careful not to be too OCD about buying everything, because the more AAs you have, the slower the grind gets. There are many, many totally useless or borderline useless AAs that are a waste. All AAs in the General that increase your stats for example are fairly worthless. Search online before you buy anything.
Potions
Players can craft and buy an array of potions with effects of varying use, depending on your class.
The main range of level-tiered potions can all be bought from the merchants Elwin Razorfur (low level potions) and Ralkor Stoneclaw (higher level potions) in the western trader building of PoK. Alchemist Adeben on the 2nd floor in the city of Crescent Reach sells ranks I-X (1-10) of all potions.
Dealing with all the crap monsters drop
Mobs in EQ drop a lot of items, and your bags will quickly fill up. Loot from random monsters can be categorized as follows:
Questing
For some years, EQ has had a "real" quest system with a quest journal tracking your active quests (also called Tasks) and objectives. You still talk to NPCs via the [keywords] to get a quest, but once it's in your quest log, the quest evolves as you go through the steps. It's a pretty neat system as it allows for quests to contain many steps (some have 20+ steps), often without having to yo-yo back and forth betweeen the quest giver and the environment. You can also preview the final reward.
All older quests (including the first epics) still follow the ancient system of merely talking to NPCs and trading them items. These quests can still be multiquested. Thankfully, NPCs no longer eat items that aren't useful to them, so there's no danger of accidentally handing an NPCs the wrong item or vice versa. You will get any item back if the NPC has no use for it.
As mentioned in the leveling section, questing can be mixed in with grinding to form a meaningful way of leveling, but only the TSS zone path as far as I know it. Only at level 80, quests from the latest content start rewarding good xp that contribute significantly.
Example of a quest (actually a mission, same principle) with multiple objectives that unfold as your progress
Grouping
Like most modern MMORPG's, EQ has a built-in group finding tool which is brought up via /lfg. Usually zones from the recent expansions are populated, while people mostly level solo or by multiboxing in less recent zones. It's not worth it to spend a lot of time finding groups at low levels other than for the social aspect or if you're playing with a friend, but on the other hand, go ahead and group if you can find one, because thanks to group xp bonuses, grouping does not significantly slow down your xp gain if you also mow down mobs faster.
When you get to level 100, you might be able to find a group in RoF. However, be warned that a lot of content is still done in-guild or by multiboxers, and it can be hard to find groups.
The latest bunch of expansions have a rather clear-cut set of tiers of group content, where it's expected that you go through them in order, roughly. Each tier has increasing difficulty and rewards better gear along the way.
A cool thing about modern EQ zones is that all zones are fundamentally like you remember dungeons in the old days: Lots of trash, and named/rare spawns with placeholders. Even the entry zone of the HoT expansion has many named mob spawns all over the place (with placeholders of course, and the named is an uncommon spawn), which will drops nice loot. Outdoor zones are thus no longer just for soloing gimps purely grinding xp.
On a side note, items in EQ have been balanced/normalized for several years now. Gone are the days of a boss dropping either a godly item or pure junk. Haste seems to be the only stat omitted from this rule, and appears a bit randomly here and there. Also, spell focus effects are very beneficial to spellcasters and also aren't normalized.
Missions
Missions are instanced versions of zones or dungeons made for groups of 3-6 players. You begin a mission by talking to an NPC (which often have a (Missions) tag under their name), and there may or not be some requirements for being to request a mission, such as having completed a few quests first. One person (at least) must be eligible to request the mission, and the rest may or may not need certain requirements, such as a minimum level. Requesting a mission works just like getting a quest, you go through some RP chat and finally type the right [keyword] to the NPC to get it. After requesting the mission, everyone will get a quest (a "Shared Task") in their quest journal, which is the contents of the mission. Each person must then separately say a keyword to the NPC to enter, after which they get teleported to the instance. The quest objectives of the mission will typically involve explores a bit, killing several mobs, collecting some items, and killing some boss mobs. At the end, you typically get xp, money, faction and access to a chest with loot.
Missions in HoT and VoA result in guaranteed loot drops at the end and, along with a decent chunk of experience and platinum. Missions are often what people do for loot, faction and, to a lesser extent, xp in the high-end group game. The mobs in missions aren't necessarily that much more difficult than equal tier open zoned and named.
Note again that you must have a minimum of 3 players in your group in order to be able to request a mission, so you can't request them solo or with your mercenary. You can request them if you dual box and thus have 2 players and 2 mercs up, or you can ask another person to join your group while you request the mission. After entering, the extra player can leave and you can go do the mission on your own.
Raiding
The raiding game is completely separate from the group game, with its own instances, progression path and tiers of gear. I don't know anything about modern EQ raiding, so maybe someone else can fill in. What I know is that tier 1 raid gear is approximately as good as the highest tier group gear.
True raids (not including really old ones like Planes of Power, Velious or earlier) require a minimum of 6 players in a group to start the instance.
Mounts
Since Luclin, EQ has had mounts. Mounts provide the following ups and downs:
All accounts, as far as I know, should be eligible for at least one free mount via the /claim window after you've bought the latest expansion. Look for the "Verdant Hedgerow Leaf"; this is a fast mount that also gives you a very nice AC, HP and mana buff.
The Bazaar
The bazaar is a special zone where players can setup a real character to act as a merchant (trader), allowing other people to buy items from you. The bazaar is accessed through a gate in the northwest corner of PoK. Head towards the hub teleporter, and you are ported to the trading hub. There are bankers in the center, and the zone branches out into smaller rooms (for anti-lag purposes, the original bazaar was one huge room), where you will find people selling their stuff. To bring up the bazaar search interface, type /bazaar or press the assigned hotkey. You can now search for items by name, level, price and through categories. Click the item you're after, and then the Find Trader button. A path lights up that leads you to the trader. Right-click on them like a merchant and you can buy their items. Be careful with certain stackable items, that you don't accidentally buy too many and waste your money.
To set up your own trader, you must first of all own a gold subscription. If you have that, you must buy one or more Trader's Satchel (note that they weigh a lot) from Merchant Tekrama, who is in the first round room of the bazaar as you enter from PoK. They cost very little. Put the items you wish to sell in Trader's Satchels. Now go to one of the smaller rooms in the bazaar, and walk onto one of the wooden floors. Type /trader, and a window opens up where you can set the price you want for each of the items you have in your Trader's Satchels. Now press the Begin Trader button, and you are now a merchant that other players can buy from.
Note that while in the bazaar, you cannot become encumbered (carrying too much weight), and you do not consume food nor drink.
Tradeskills
-> Click here for the ultimate tradeskill leveling guide
EQ has the following tradeskill setup:
After you've learned a recipe, which you can also add to a favorites list for easier access, you merely need to have its ingredients somewhere in your inventory in order to perform the combine. Click the Combine button, and you either fail or succeed, the resulting item(s) being placed on your cursor.
The organized tradeskill UI (slightly customized), here shown with tailoring
There are still trivial rates on all recipes that indicate at which skill level you'll be able to reliably craft an item. Generally, there is always a 5% change of succeeding any combine, and at the other end of the spectrum always a 5% risk of failing - except when your skill is more than 100 points above the trivial for a recipe.
A while ago, tradeskill trophies were introduced. There are items that evolve as you craft and increase your skill in a tradeskill significantly. Read about tradeskill trophies here.
Tradeskills as you level will be largely useless and a money sink, with the exception of Fletching, which is a cheap and easy source of arrows. Some epics also require a medium amount of tradeskilling. The state of modern tradeskills is sadly a bit predictable and spreadsheet-like, but there are good news as well. Some quick facts:
Multiboxing
EQ is a good game to multibox in, and will allow you to explore much more, and even high-end group content on your own. Multiboxing means playing two or more characters at the same time. Classes in EQ are still unique enough that the synergies between two different classes can massively enhance your ability to kill stuff and even complete missions on your own.
EQ's slower combat pace and multi-spellcasting macro system (cast spell A, wait 3 seconds, cast spell B, wait 3 seconds, etc.) makes it a perfect fit for multiboxing, as you can combine a melee with a supporting spellcaster, without losing too much efficiency. Additionally, since each character can have a mercenary, going from one to two accounts makes you go from 2 to 4 characters, two of them being mercs of course. This allows you to start missions on your own (requires a minimum of 3 players in a group), and lets you, for example, pick both a tank and a healer mercenary.
A classic setup is a melee class + shaman, which several guildmates run. Shamans are a multitool while the melee grinds mobs. Many other combinations will work absolutely fine, although I don't recommend boxing more than one melee, as they require positioning in order to do damage.
The recommended tool for greatly enhancing multiboxing is ISBoxer (free trial available). You can however, get started without it. ISBoxer can also run EQ in true full screen windowed mode, which is very nice.
With EQ being free to play at the base, I would recommend dabbling in multiboxing very early on, as it's a ton of fun. Doing it right from the start if you're a brand new player might add a bit of extra confusion, but if you're already an experienced player, it is very optimal to level two characters equally. Alternatively, wait until you've gotten a feel for the game on your own, then explore multiboxing.
For reference, I currently box a monk+shaman with tank+healer merc, and I am going through the second tier of HoT group content with no big problems. It does take some gear, training and the right ISBoxer+macro setup, but it shows that it's possible. I also recently started a ranger+magician team, which is great fun too. Almost anything goes!
Mercenary advancement
If you read the earlier guide on starting out, you should have bought a mercenary early on. Don't worry, you can still hire them at any level, they cost a bit of platinum to hire. Starting around level 14, they will also cost a small amount of money to keep active, billed every 15 minutes. At maximum level, it's around 40 plat per 15 minutes for the starting rank, so it's not much.
You may remember how you hired a Journeyman Tier 1 (T1) mercenary. This can be improved up to tier 5 (T5) through questing. The quests you need to complete are all in Korascian Warrens in the SoD expansion, and they are as follows, with no previous requirements. I think they require around level 75 to start.
1) Find Your Allies. Tip: You can pick up the items while invisible.
2) Whom Frogs Destroy. Tip: You can feign death to avoid fighting the mobs if they attack you.
3) The Wrath of Korascian
4) Disrupt the Siege and Champions No More at the same time. The first one is a tough quest to solo due to heavy mob density up north where the catapults are.
5) Retinue of the Frog-God
These five quests should be soloable around level 85-90 with a mercenary and at least HoT T1 gear, although some help will definitely make it go faster. After this, you are eligible for a mission: Murdunk's Last Stand. In the mission, and endless stream of mobs, about one per minute, spawns and walks through a set path. After killing 35 of them, you have completed the mission and you can gate out. You are now eligible to buy a T5 merc. Simply dismiss your current merc and visit the mercenary liasion of your choice. Note that a T5 merc at high levels cost around 100p per 15 minutes to keep active, so don't keep them out unless you need them. They are worth it, though, and are godly in group content when seen in relation to how little effort they require.
Guild Lobby and Guild Hall
Guild Lobby
The guild lobby is a zone accessed via gate in the southwest corner of PoK. The guild lobby is a small zone, with the following features:
The Guild Hall is a small, instanced zone for guild members only, that has a guild bank, merchants, a teleporter, an augmentation sealer, and tradeskill containers. Welcome to the guild cave!
Most useful is the gnome Zelfmin Werlikanin in the southeast corner. He is a merchant that sells various stones, and after buying one, you trade it back to him. To your left, the sparkling blue teleportation device will then teleport you to the zone corresponding to the stone you gave him.
Player housing
Player housing was introduced with House of Thule. I haven't used it much, but it's basically a bunch of instanced zones where up to around 70 players can each buy a house and fill it with items, both real weapons and armor, and dedicated decorative items.
Read about player housing here
The housing area is accessed off the Guild Lobby (via PoK); in the northwest corner is a gate to the housing areas.
Marketplace, claims and veteran rewards
Marketplace
The Marketplace is an in-game store (essentially a browser window), where you can buy all sorts of stuff for Station Cash, which can be bought with real money, and which is also given to you monthly if you have a gold sub, plus during various special events and bonuses. Stuff you can buy includes:
Type /claim and a window pops up (might take a little while to load the first time) with a list of items your account is eligible for. Resubscribing veterans should find all sorts of random stuff that you get when buying an expansion, such as a mount, armor packages, teleport clickies, cosmetic items, XP potions, food, and some very nice bags (Dreamweave Satchel if you bought HoT and Traveler's Rucksack if you bought VoA). Some can only be claimed once per account, but might be flagged Heirloom so you can transfer it around to other characters. Other might say 999 quantity in the claim window, meaning that you can claim it on 999 characters on your account, so essentially on every character you ever make.
Veteran rewards
Veteran rewards are special abilities given to players, one per year they have been subscribed to the game, not necessarily consecutively. Returning players may find that they are eligible for some of these.
First, type /played, and the last line of text output will tell you how many years and days your account is entitled to. The year figure indicates how many rewards you are eligible for, and also for how many characters on your account you may claim the rewards for. Note: For me, I initially had an entitlement of 2 years and change when I first resubscribed back in 2009, then a few months later it suddenly jumped to 6 years.
Click here for a full guide to Veteran Rewards
If you feel certain that you are going to play the character you're on a fair amount of time and want to spend a set of veteranrewards on it, type /veteranreward, confirm, and you now get an appropriate number of new abilities in your AA window, on the Special tab.
Rewards vary in usefulness. The most prominent one is the 1st year reward, Lesson of the Devoted, which gives double xp for 30 minutes. Others are borderline useless, and some only situationally useful. Don't worry too much if you're not eligible for any.
Epic weapons
Epic weapons were released with the Kunark expansion and were at the time, immensely powerful weapons, one for every class. These old "1.0" epic quests are 99% unchanged, and many still involve insane camps, rare drops, getting drops off bosses and lots of travel. But, at least most of the zones will be empty and the content 100% soloable starting already at level 60. The clicky effect on epic 1.0 is mostly useless these days. They will send you on some long journeys and make you explore lots of areas you may never have seen before, so I highly recommend doing them for the experience itself. Start investigating your class' epic at level 50 (search Allakhazam for "monk epic" for example) if it sounds interesting to you.
Epics evolved into two new versions later on, called 1.5 and 2.0, the two which are fundamentally the same, the difference being that the 2.0 is more powerful than 1.5 and requires a raid drop. Back in the day, I believe the 1.5 was meant for groups/casual guilds, and the 2.0 meant for raiders. Of course, most of the content is trivial these days, only the final quest item of the 2.0 epic still requires a bunch of people. All 1.5 and 2.0 epics have a clicky effect (inventory clickable) that is to this very day still useful for all classes, as they provide percentage-based scaling buffs of some sort, that stack with almost everything. As an example, the monk epic increases the monks hitpoints by 25% and adds a melee proc that does damage. The shaman effect is a group buff that gives everyone a 500 hp/tick regen and increases the power of their critical strikes greatly.
Starting the 1.5 epic requires that you have either completed the 1.0 epic, or have completed a rather simple "1.5 prequest", which shouldn't take long. If you choose to do the prequest to get ahead, you can always go back and do the 1.0 epic later. You should start working on your epic 1.5 around level 65-70.
Search Allakhazam for epic weapon quests
Stuff to do besides leveling
EQ today is a game where you will experience no more than 5% of what the game has to offer if you just power through it and purely level. EQ has a rich history and many expansions, plus a level of character building many times richer than other MMORPGs. Here are some suggestions of things to do!
Links and resources
A challenge of EQ today is to find relevant, up-to-date information online. In general, google is your friend. However, remember that a lot of online EQ content is outdated, so always look at the date of a forum post, comment, website or article before you draw any conclusions.
General websites
Allakhazam (ZAM) - The original EQ database which is still the most widely used. Many guides for quests, NPCs, items, camps and such, even for recent content. A premium account is required for a tiny subset of features, such as performing an advanced item search.
Notable pages on Zam:
- Spell list - Find all your class' spells here.
- Directions - Find your way to most zones.
- Emotes - Various emotes and slash commands.
- Tribute - The tribute system explained.
- Current Hot Zones
Lucy - A more raw database primarily of spells, but also items. If you want the technical details of a spell, search here.
EQItems / 13th floor - Item database with advanced, free searching.
Almar's EQ guides - Recently written, up-to-date and excellent guides to returning and new players. Covers a lot of things to get started. His class descriptions might be a bit out of touch with reality.
The Magician's Tower Returning Player FAQ - Lots of general info for a returnee, mainly written with magicians in mind.
EQ Traders's Corner - All about tradeskills. Their search on the front page is gold for finding the use of any tradeskill component or recipe, and the complete tradeskill guide on the forums is the go-to resource for leveling up tradeskills.
Rasper's Repository - Player made guide for each of the many recent expansions. Includes the intended progression path, list of quests and missions, gear overview and more. Extremely useful particularly for the latest two expansions, HoT and VoA.
EQ Resource - kind of like Rasper's, not quite as extensive though. Has better maps showing the location of quest objectives.
Magelo - Online player profiles ("armory"), also contains a database of items, mobs and recipes to an extent, but not as useful as Zam.
Fanra's EverQuest Wiki - General EQ wiki, some content rather outdated, some recent stuff is okay.
EQ Clickies (goes down once in a while) - comprehensive searching of items with click effects, as well as augs.
raidloot.com - Searchable loot database, primarily focused on end-game raid loot.
Samanna's Reference Desk - Originally a shaman website, but has a bunch of general guides and data for various stuff, such as levels of run speed, spell stacking, faction, and more.
EQ Newbie FAQ - Various guides and articles.
EQ Players - SOE's offical EQ news and contents website. It's pretty shitty, as expected. The only neat thing is that you can search the armory for pretty much any character that has been logged in for the past decade or so, and see their level, stats and gear.
EQRaidWiki and EQ raiding strategies - Modern raid boss strategies.
EQ Commands - list of /slash commands, emotes, pet commands and more.
EQ AA Search - database of all ranks of all AAs, for the majority of classes.
UI customization and tools
Mapfiend - Better maps.
EQ Interface - Custom user interfaces, both complete sets and smaller elements of the UI.
GamParse - The best dps-parsing tool for EQ.
Forums (mainly class forums)
EQ class websites and forums aren't the bustling hive of activity they have been. There are a few that stand out, though, and as EQ generally changes at a glacial pace, many old forums are well worth searching through for information. Tip: Use google's "site" keyword to search in a specific domain only, for example: "shaman spells site:crucible.samanna.net". Use the date filter on google to get more recent content.
Official EQ forums - Fairly decent activity.
Official class forums, Archived official class forums
Bard: The Concert Hall (new) and The Concert Hall (old archives)
Beastlord: The Beastlord's Den
Berserker: GoBerserker
Druid: The Druid's Grove and The Druid's Grove Archives
Cleric: EQ Clerics and EverQuest Clerics
Enchanter: The Runes
Magician: The Magician's Tower, also see The Mage Compendium
Monk: Monkly Business
Necromancer: Necrotalk
Ranger: EQ Outrider
Rogue: The Safehouse
Shaman and Paladin: The Spirit Realm (Samanna's)
Shadow Knight: Evilgamer
Warrior: The Steel Warrior.
Wizard: Graffe's - Inactive/archived wizard forums.
Random guides, nostalgia and fun stuff to look at
Sites that will make you weep with nostalgia.
EQ Stats, Heroics, Mods & Skills FAQ
Boss respawn timers - Many still correct.
EQ Atlas - The legendary hand-made maps of all zones up to PoP. Many of us veteran players had a binder of these maps printed, before the in-game map system was introduced.
More maps
Guide to Veteran Rewards
Drexxell's Plane of Sky Guide - The ultimate resource for one of the most complex zones in EverQuest, or any MMORPG for that matter.
Other Drexxell guides and maps
Zen Archer - Mainly famous for its "Quillmane Spoiler" section.
Guide to the EQ map system
Complete zone connection map of the world
Zam patch history - Try reading some of the ancient early patch notes for laughs.
EQLinks - Big link collection
Unsung Heroes - Various ancient quest guides, mainly for monks.
Food and drink durations explained
Old unsolved quests - Discussion forum about unsolves and later solved quests in Eq. Ancient.
Plane of Fear guide
Irontaail's Plane of Mischief guide
Runengetums guides - Various guides
Secrets of Ssraeshza Temple - Guide to the Luclin raid zone
Tinkerbear's EQ page - Ancient, outdated EQ info about spells and skills
Woodash's EverQuest gallery - Huge screenshot gallery of nostalgia. NOTE: If you're using Firefox, images will most likely not show up, as the URLs to them have some forward slashes in them instead of backslashes. View it in Chrome or IE instead.
The Bow and Arrow - Primarily a ranger resource, somewhat updated
Pak'Cafan - Various updated news and guides
Level 2 users can edit this wikipost, so give us a hand!
If you're finally returning to EverQuest from a different MMO, or you're a brand new player, this guide is for you.
Table of Contents:
- Why Play EverQuest
- Free to Play, subscription model and how to download EQ
- New and returning players: Picking a server, class and race
- Getting started and leveling
- Improving the user interfaces, maps and common customization
- Alternate Advancement (AA)
- Potions
- Dealing with all the crap monsters drop
- Questing
- Grouping
- Missions
- Raiding
- Mounts
- The Bazaar
- Tradeskills
- Multiboxing
- Mercenary advancement
- Guild Lobby and Guild Hall
- Player housing
- Marketplace, claims and veteran rewards
- Epic weapons
- Stuff to do besides leveling
- Links and resources
Originally by Pilsner of the SomethingAwful forums. Reposted here with permission. Various edits by RedBot & Maskoi. If you'd like to edit or include a section please reply, we could use the help!
EverQuest (EQ) is the legendary MMORPG that was one of the first big successes of its genre. Launched in early 1999, EQ set the standards that still to an extent live on today, with a class-based, level-based, monster killing and item-hunting game featuring massive timesinks.
EQ is the game where real-life phone chains were set up to alert guild members of a boss mob that spawned in the middle of the night. It is the game where people (me) spent 100 real days of played time over the course of one year to hit the max level, and where 10 minutes of sitting down, waiting for mana to regenerate betweeen kills was acceptable solo gameplay. It was the game where actual girls roleplayed sex slaves that let other players shit on their face for in-game money. It was a game where traveling from one end of the world to the other could take hours on foot, and where pretty much doing anything worthwhile was a massive undertaking. It was a game where dying at high levels wiped out several hours worth of xp grinding, and where not finding your corpse again meant losing everything you had on you. It was a game of the most quirky and weird exploits and bugs, and unintended consequences of the laissez-faire development style the game enjoyed.
EQ was a game that dumped players into a large world, in their race's home city, with merely a note in their backpack, suggesting they go see their guild master. From then on, there was no hand-holding. There were no in-game maps, no quest journal, and merely venturing out in the newbie area and attacking one of the weakest monsters might end up getting you killed due to an unlucky streak, or because another monster joined the fight. There was no set-in-stone leveling path, and no automated quest system. You had to work for everything: Getting your spells, travelling, looting and selling, training your skills, and working on tradeskills where you lost your ingredients if you weren't skilled enough or tried the wrong combination.
It was also a game with a strong, small town like community, many friendly and helpful people, and a level of in-game patience, helpfulness and socializing which will never again be matched in a mainstream game in the future, due to changes in mentality and attitude.
Ancient screenshot of early EQ
EQ has gone through a ton of expansions since its inception, and has changed substantially. Many of the above horror stories are no longer relevant in the current gameplay, and great improvements have been made especially to make travel faster, dying impose less of a penalty, and to make progression, grouping and raiding more readily available. Still, many fundamental aspects of the game remain the same, and returning players will feel at home.
Screenshot of modern EQ, House of Thule expansion (customized UI). Those wasps would wipe out a raid of 100 players from the early era.
Here are the EQ expansions:
- The Ruins of Kunark (April 2000)
- The Scars of Velious (December 2000)
- The Shadows of Luclin (December 2001)
- The Planes of Power (October 2002)
- The Legacy of Ykesha (February 2003)
- Lost Dungeons of Norrath (September 2003)
- Gates of Discord (February 2004)
- Omens of War (September 2004)
- Dragons of Norrath (February 2005)
- Depths of Darkhollow (September 2005)
- Prophecy of Ro (February 2006)
- The Serpent's Spine (September 2006)
- The Buried Sea (February 2007)
- Secrets of Faydwer (November 2007)
- Seeds of Destruction (October 2008)
- Underfoot (December 2009)
- House of Thule (October 2010)
- Veil of Alaris (November 2011)
- Rain of Fear (December 2012)
- Call of the Forsaken (October 2013)
- The Darkened Sea (November 2014)
- The Broken Mirror (November 2015)
A quick rundown of the last 8 expansions:
- Seeds of Destruction (SoD): Added mercenaries (hirelings that fight with you). Level cap increased to 85.
- Underfoot (UF): Added achievements. Very tough content that no one bothers with today.
- House of Thule (HoT): At level 80, cheap and powerful tradable gear from this expansion is widely available, and allows new players to easily get up to speed in terms of gear. Many easier solo and group quests rewarding good loot and experience. Now 10 base inventory slots, and bigger bags, up to 36 slots. Housing system added. Level cap increased to 90.
- Veil of Alaris (VoA): Greatly enhanced hotbar system to all EQ players regardless of expansions owned. Items now clickable from within bags (requires having bought the expansion). Level cap increased to 95.
- Rain of Fear (RoF): Level cap increased to 100.
- Call of the Forsaken (CotF): Mercenary Upgrades (AA, Gear), Heroic Adventures, 2 Shared Bank Slots added
- The Darkened Sea (TDS): Level cap to 105, Mount Key Ring
- The Broken Mirror (TBM): Level Scaling Raids for Planes of Hate and Fear, Illusion Key Ring
Why play EverQuest?EQ is an old game with a huge amount of content to explore. The graphics are outdated, but the atmosphere and feel of the game is very different from newer MMORPGs, most of which EQ has inspired. A few main features of EQ:
- Vast amounts of quests, zones, dungeons and cities to explore.
- Very solo-friendly thanks to mercenaries, which are hirelings that fight with you.
- Huge amounts of long-lasting character development, in the form of 100 levels, AA points (extra abilities and spells), items with fun and useful effects, augmentations (gems that enhance armor), hundreds of spells per class of several ranks, tradeskills, progression, gear, achievements and faction.
- Slower-paced combat that doesn't require frantic button spamming, interrupting with 1 second warning and the need to move every 5 seconds on bosses. While you can't AFK your way to victory, EQ has a very different combat style that can be a breath of fresh air compared to other games.
- 16 unique classes that haven't suffered from so much class homogenization, and still fundamentally play the same as in old times. This can be for better or for worse, but you feel very special when playing a certain class.
- Quest system that ranges from minor kill and collect quests to epic quests that will take weeks of travelling, hunting, tradeskills and boss killing to complete. EQ also has group quests with shared objectives, that can feature a long chain of evolving objectives as you progress through the quest, without the need to return to a quest giver every two minutes.
- Much less of a "gear reset" by each expansion. Many old items, even ancient items from the very first few expansions, remain useful today because of their click effects. This opens up the entire world to hunting for certain items, which is a cool game within the game. EQ is also much better at having overlap between expansions, so gear obtained from the previous expansion is still very useful. Your gear and items are not replaced within a few weeks of a new patch or expansion hitting.
- Heavy emphasis on "named" mobs, also know as rare mobs. All zones made in the past several years contain dozens of rare spawns that give good, useful loot, yet are killable with a few grouped players, or even solo if you're high level. Imagine WoW's rare mobs, but with placeholders, much more frequent spawn rates, and drops as good as dungeon loot. It basically means that interesting loot can be found all over the place, instead of purely in a few instanced dungeons.
- Yearly anniversary events.
Free to Play, subscription model and how to download EQEQ is, as of March 2012, "free to play" using a hybrid model. There is a 3-tier subscription model, with the entry-level being free, the middle tier ("Silver") which historically cost $5 to activate yet remains without monthly cost, and the top tier ("Gold") costing $15 per month as it always has. A gold sub is exactly like a regular sub has always been, with a few extra benefits. Gold accounts downgrade to Silver status when no longer paid with funds or Krono.
Go to everquest.com and click the PLAY FREE! button to download the EQ installer and get started
After running the installer, you should be presented with the EQ LaunchPad application, which will, after creating an account and logging in, automatically download all the necessary content. This can take several hours due to the large amount of data.
By starting a free account, you automatically get access to all expansions up to and including the House of Thule expansion, only lacking the latest expansion (Veil of Alaris). Expansion-wise, this is more than enough to get the full EQ experience. However, the free and silver models are fairly restrictive, and should not be viewed as a viable way of playing the game at higher levels. You will be restricted in the classes you can pick, your inventory size, allowed money amount and alternate advancement. That being said, you should still be able to explore and get a feel for all the fundamentals of the game, and should give you many weeks of free enjoyment at the very least. It will also be great for players who just want to get their nostalgia fix.
Read all about the F2P model here
Notable restrictions are (free/silver):
- You can only start new characters of the following races: Human, Erudite, Barbarian and Gnome.
- You can only start new characters of the following classes: Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue.
- 2/4 characters maximum per server
- 250/1000 AA maximum
- 4/6 inventory slots
- You can only hire Apprentice rank mercenaries
The system also works in the way that if you let your gold sub run out, it is converted to a free account, allowing you to keep playing your characters, regardless of race/class, with slightly diminished spell power and reduced inventory. You will keep access to all your AA abilities, but will be unable to earn further AA than the cap allows. You will never lose any items by downgrading.
New and returning players: Picking a server, class and raceEQ has branched out over the years. Here are the ways to play EQ that are different from the regular servers.
- Firiona Vie (FV) server: This is a special server intended for roleplaying, but as you imagine, not much real RP takes place. It has a lower population, and some report that it's a shithole, while others like it. 50% xp bonus. A really special thing about FV is that all items in the game, with the exception of epics and some of their associated quest drops, are tradable. This means that it's possible to buy end-game raid loot for (huge amounts of) platinum. Don't expect to walk onto the server and just farm or buy whatever you please though, players report that anything even remotely worth owning, even a clickie from 15 expansions ago, is perma-farmed, and current raid loot costs millions of platinum. You cannot transfer off of this server to a regular server.
- Test: In the EQ Launcher, click the little gear icon in the bottom left, click "Select Game Version", and choose Test from the combobox. The game will now patch to the Test server. Test gets the upcoming patches and expansions before Live, has a permanent double XP bonus, gives all veteran rewards to all characters you make, allows you to reset your AAs, and has free Gold status and all expansions for free. Yes, you can play totally free and box as much as you like. There have been no character wipes on the server for at least 10 years, in spite of the lingering rumours and official stance from SOE about it. The downside is a low-medium population (although far from completely dead), and an almost-dead Bazaar. You can copy any character from Live to Test by typing /testcopy - boom, you now have your character on Test to play with (you can do a /testcopy on a character every 8 hours). An upside or downside (depending on how you look at it) of this is that since you can copy characters with items repeatedly, platinum and item value is almost meaningless, so you can hoarde huge amounts of plat and spend them frivolously on gear, tradeskills, and such. You can also copy over XP potions, big bags you might have /claimed, Gold Tickets, you name it.
- Fippy Darkpaw and Vulak'Aerr servers: Launched in early 2011, these are so-called "Timelocked Progression" (TLP) servers, that emulate classic EQ. They started with no expansions and a level 50 cap, and as of writing this, they are at the Planes of Power expansion with level 65 as the maximum. Many things are not quite like they were in classic times though, so it's not truly classic. A lot of people are enjoying the servers, although you will have to deal with competing for non-instanced raid content and no mercenaries for example.
- Zek server: This is a PvP server where players can attack eachother. Historically, EQ PvP has been hilariously imbalanced, but I don't know much about the state of it today. Very low population.
- Antonius Bayle (AB) server: A regular server, except it's hosted in Europe, giving European players lower ping. I'm European playing on a US server, and while the ping difference is noticable compared to AB, you can play fine across the Atlantic.
- Trakanon server: A regular server, except it was created in late 2010. It's rather dead though, so don't play there unless you truly want to be alone.
- Vox server: A regular server, but launched with the F2P patch in March 2012. It will probably also be dead.
- EQMac: Many years ago, a separate server for Mac players, along with a special Mac client was created. The advancement of the project was abandoned by the Planes of Power expansion, and the server has not moved an inch except tiny bugfixes since. According to SOE, playing on the server will become 100% free with the regular F2P launch, and it is the closest official way to play classic EQ, with original spells, tradeskills, xp rates, death penalties and the like. Check out eqmac.com and this official forum post.
- Project 1999: An unofficial, free, emulated EQ server that attempts to recreate truly classic EQ. See Project 1999.
- Leveling up a certain point is extremely, ridiculously fast. A clueless returnee who hasn't played in 10 years will be able to ding lvl 60 with a handful of AA within less than 2 days /played solo, and that includes afk'ing, surfing websites for info and spending time chatting. A focused player can reach lvl 60 in 10-15 hours. With powerleveling, less is possible. From lvl 60 and up it will gradually feel a bit slower, but it's still very fast and you will probably be level 70 or 80 within a month of casual playing.
- Some years ago, a range of gear, approximately one tier per 10 levels, called Defiant was introduced. All classes and archetypes have their variants of this gear. There are pieces for every visible slot and weapons, and they are a random, uncommon (as in 1 in 10 or so) from any mob in the game. More pieces such as ear, neck, belt and more can be bought or quested for. The armor will wipe the floor with any gear you remember from the early times. For example, the level 60 armor pieces have well over 150 hitpoints and mana per piece and more stats than you can shake a stick at. Defiant gear is abundant and guildmates will throw it in your face for free, or you can buy it for little money on the bazaar.
- At level 80, you will be able to equip tradable items from the first tier (T1) from the House of Thule (HoT) expansion. Most of these are fairly cheap, abundant and easily obtainable. These items have roughly 900-1000 "HEM" (hit points, endurance and mana), and obscene amounts of stats and resists, easily enough to cap you. Compare that to how the top-end items in Velious had 100 HEM.
- Another question many people ask is: "I want to go back and wipe out all the bosses from the first couple of expansions for nostalgia's sake, which class should I choose?" The answer is any, as any class at level 80 will be able to kill anything up to and including Velious, and many can do it already in the 70s. Really old 32k hitpoint bosses can mostly be solo'd in your 60's.
The character creation screen
Choosing a classAll classes fundamentally play and feel like they did in ancient times. If you start a new character you will hardly see any difference, for better and for worse. The good news is that all classes have had a slight homogenization, meaning that other classes than warriors can tank, other classes than monks can pull, and other classes than clerics can heal well. Hybrids are also far from the crap they once were. It is nowhere near the homogenization that has taken place in WoW though, and classes still feel very unique.
If you're a brand new player, here are some fundamentals of the EQ class system. The four archetypes in EQ are:
- Pure melee: Berserker, Monk, Rogue, Warrior
- Hybrids: Bard, Beastlord, Paladin, Ranger, Shadow Knight
- Priests (Wisdom-based spellcasters): Cleric, Druid, Shaman
- Pure casters (Intelligence-based spellcasters): Enchanter, Magician, Necromancer, Wizard
Pure melee have neither spells nor mana, but use a resource called Endurance to execute some of their special abilities. Think of it as melee mana. You will be able to do the majority of your damage and use most abilities endlessly without using endurance at all, and at high levels, you get abilities to regenerate your endurance. They can basically keep churning forever. Instead of spells, they get various insta-cast special attacks and self-buffs to increase their damage.
Hybrids are a mix of melee and spell casting. They don't use endurance, but mana for certain abilities that either enhance their melee attacks, or make them a little closer to a spell caster, such as casting damage or healing spells while fighting, adding procs to their weapons, or casting buffs and debuffs. Bards are extra special in this category, as they have songs instead of spells, all of which apply effects with a short duration, but they can be cast over and over and mixed with eachother to do many things at once.
Priests are fundamentally healers, but with varying side-roles and all have the ability to buff other players and to debuff mobs. They do not melee.
Pure casters do not melee either and have the weakest defenses against melee, but have the most powerful detrimental spells and the best pets that fight along them.
If you're familiar with the classes in EQ, many things have changed over the years that might help you decide for and against a class.
- Spells now come at every level. Where before, pure casters got new spells every 4 levels, priests every 5 and hybrids every 7-9 levels, the spells are now spread out and every level will bring new spells. Virtually all of the ancient spells from 1999 and onwards are still there and unchanged, merely having had their level changed a bit up or down. Class-defining spells and abilities such as Mesmerize, Feign Death, Snare, shaman slow, Selo's, teleports, Spirit of Wolf, Backstab, Harm Touch and Lay of Hands, you name it.
- Picking a Gate or teleport-capable class is no longer necessary if you hate travel. All classes now get the "Origin" AA for free at level 5, which is an ability that teleports (gates) you to your home city. Origin has an 18-minute cooldown. In addition, you can obtain a hammer (Worker Sledgemallet) via a quest at level 50, which teleports you close to a PoK book.
- Melee classes start out fundamentally as they were back in old times - autoattack and hit one or two special abilities every 5-10 seconds. Quite dull, but it picks up starting around 60, and you start getting more and more special abilities, some costing endurance, some free. For example, monks get a special attack that executes three powerful flying kicks, on a 30-second cooldown. At higher levels, all melee classes have several special attacks, and a wide array of battle-enhancing (offensive or defensive) abilities with varying cooldowns and durations that will keep your busy and engaged in fighting, just like a spellcaster, and give you the ability to choose between burst or sustained damage. The button spamming isn't as anywhere near as frantic as some other modern MMORPGs, but I consider that a good thing.
- You now respawn with all your gear, bags and coin on you when you die, so don't worry too much about dying through the lack of gate, teleports or feign death. You still lose experience (about 8% of a level), but there are various easy ways to ressurect on your own these days.
- Class xp penalties were removed a long time ago.
- All players now have access to mercenaries. A mercenary (merc) is a bot that you hire, which fights along you, replicating a real player's actions. You can pick a healer, tank or damage dealer mercenary. A healer (cleric) does a tremendous job at healing you, and the tank (warrior) does an even more amazing job at tanking. The damage dealer mercenary is not suitable for new players going solo, but can be useful in group content at higher levels. Mercs have been a game-changer, massively enhancing the soloing and survivability power of all classes, and synergizing especially well with certain classes.
- After killing the last mob in a pack, you go out of combat, and after a 30 second timer has ticked down, you enter a resting state, which allows you to regenerate hitpoints and mana at a massive rate. Gone are the days of waiting 10 minutes to med up; you can now go from half dead to full hitpoints and mana in a few minutes. Spellcasters can also sit on mounts during combat and cast spells, while also meditating.
- Pets stay, and keep their toys and buffs, while zoning and camping.
So, any class you desire should basically be good to go, although if you're looking to further narrow it down, players usually mention the following classes when the topic comes up. I'm going to partly quote friends and post second-hand reports, as I haven't played all classes.
- Bard: Wide array of utility and spells to explore and mess around with mobs. Super fast travel. Pseudo-feign death. Very sought-after group enhancing class. Can supposedly "do anything".
- Magician and Necromancer: If you like the thought of a pure, hardcore caster, these are both great choices. They're both pet classes with many tricks up their sleeves; the magician having the best pets and good nukes, the necro having a weaker pet and strong dots instead of nukes, along with feign death. Good solo ability and damage output. Magician pets can tank well at high levels. Low gear requirement.
- Monk: The class I've personally played for two years. Not much utility, no real spells, but innate feign death that almost never fails, and Mend, which can be enhanced with AAs at high levels to have its cooldown reduced to 30 seconds and heals you for 50% of your health the vast majority of the time. The ultimate explorer and survivor. Good pulling tools, good damage output (both burst and sustained), medium tanking ability. Good single-target solo xp grinder. Medium AA and medium-high gear requirement. Monks still have a weight limit, but it quickly climbs to 30, and with coin being weightless now and weight-reducing bags being abundant, it's no problem.
- Ranger: Melee/druid hybrid. Infamous for their headshot ability, which does obscene amounts of damage and can insta-kill mobs at high levels. Lots of utility, decent buffs, good allround solo class. Tracking (monster radar). Medium investment AA-wise to be able to reach their peak, medium-high gear requirement (low gear requirement for headshot).
- Shadow Knight (SK): Tank/necromancer hybrid. Infamous for their ability to swarm at high levels, which means pulling dozens or even hundreds of mobs and slowly burning them down (note that this requires a lot of gear and AA) for massive xp. Heavy tank with spells, low damage against single mobs. Lots of utility and fun spells, feign death. Very high investment requirement in terms of gear and AA.
- Shaman: Still a group and duo favorite. Very good buffs and utility. Decent healer these days with AAs. Not a very fast, exciting nor efficient solo class, but a perfect second choice for a dual-box combo along with a melee. Low AA and gear requirement for grouping, medium when solo.
- Wizard: The biggest nuker in the game, being able to land massive spell strikes, along with utility such as snare, root and advanced teleport spells to all over the world. A glass cannon with weak defenses. Low AA requirement.
Here are some notes on the remaining classes, as i know it:
- Beastlord: Shaman/monk hybrid, with a decent pet. Versatile class, jack of all trades, for better and for worse.
- Berserker: Pure melee that goes amok with axes, dealing good dps. Low utility, low tanking capabilities as far as I know. Consider a monk instead.
- Cleric: Still primarily a healing class, lacks damage output, but has high defense and the best heals. Consider a shaman instead, which has good healing plus much more utility.
- Druid: A class that has waned in popularity from the old days. They can heal groups with the right amount of AAs. I believe they're left as a poor man's wizard when soloing, and require a high amount of AA. Consider a necromancer, wizard, shaman or magician instead.
- Enchanter: Mind controlling and crowd controlling class with the ability to charm mobs. Can buff, debuff and stun mobs. Group focused. The importance of an enchanter in groups has diminished over the years, as pulling tools for other classes have greatly improved (monks can now AoE mesmerize and SKs can pull any mob out of a group to them), and the importance of mana regen has gone down a due to faster ways to regenerate mana on your own. An advanced class not recommended to total newbies.
- Paladin: Tank/cleric hybrid with heals, stuns, and the ability to do massive damage against undead. Low damage output, good tanking ability. Consider an SK instead.
- Rogue: Not an optimal solo class; made for groups where a tank (with a coupled healer) takes the blows and the rogue does damage from behind. They have poisons which can do high amounts of damage when hitting mobs, and escape, which instantly makes mobs forget you and makes you invisible. Good group dps, and can explore almost anywhere with super-stealth.
- Warrior: Straight-up tanks. The best tanks in the game, but little utility. Consider a Shadow Knight if you want to play a tank class, which has much more utility and feign death, and is also a very capable tank. Alternatively, paladins are more group-friendly tanks / healer hybrids.
1) There are many bitter veteran players who won't stop posting on other forums about how their class sucks, hasn't gotten anything cool in the last several expansions and is crap compared to class X, Y and Z. In fact, I bet any class forum can contain these types of posts. Does not compute.
2) Many vocal people bitching about their class see the game from a raid point of view, and thus purely see class balance as a matter of having the highest damage output or "bringing something to the raid" via utility. End-game raiding in EQ is still not something you walk into with a pick up group; it's for guilds, and you'll need to apply to a guild and endure raiding hours and DKP and all that. This thread is based on the assumption that you will solo for the first many levels, and then do a mix of soloing, multiboxing and/or grouping at higher levels.
3) If you see damage parses (dps numbers), beware that people like to post bursts from a short battle, where they blow everything they have. Furthermore, they will be raid buffed to the teeth and be in a group full of synergizing classes. These number are pointless if you're trying to find the best class if you like damage.
Choosing a race and other character creation optionsRace
Race and character creation matters very little today. In fact, no content since Kunark has had significant content where race really mattered. There are no race xp penalties any longer. A few races stand out:
- Ogres are still the only race with total stun immunity from the front. However, near total stun immunity can be obtained via AAs for certain melee classes, so it's not that much of a big deal. Their downside is their huge size which can be seriously annoying when navigating older cities and dungeons.
- Iksars have an AC bonus, which is negligible at high levels.
- Iksars and trolls have a little extra HP regen, which is not a big deal at high levels at all.
- Gnomes are the only ones that can use the Tinkering tradeskill. Not very important, but gnomes are cool, and the race is small and doesn't take up so much of your screen, so I always pick Gnome when I can.
Picking a neutral or good race (see "Alignment" column in this table) will allow you to more easily explore the old, classic cities, plus you will likely be visiting Freeport a fair amount for tradeskills and a few quests. A few old epic quests will also require some faction grinding if you're evil. Alternatively, if you like the evil cities, pick an evil race and go slaughter the elf guards. Iksars are hated almost everywhere in the classic world.
Stat allocation
Stat allocation doesn't matter. Even at medium levels, your regular stats (STR, DEX, etc.) will be massively capped, rendering your choices here pointless. However, for the sake of doing the best you can, put most points into STA and the remaining (if any) into your class' main stat. This will be INT for pure casters, WIS for priests and hybrids, and STR for melee classes. Yet still, it won't matter in the long run.
Deity (religion)
Deity (religion) doesn't matter much either; it can change your con (level of aggression) towards some of the classic cities and factions a bit up or down, and determines what kind of Cultural armor you can wear. However, all cultural armor is equal, so it's just flavor. The only deity that people still talk about is choosing Innoruuk if you're a troll shaman, as they can get a necklace with a snare via questing. However, it's not very useful at higher levels.
Home city
Here you can pick either Crescent Reach or the classic home town for your race, such as Ak'anon for gnomes. Crescent Reach is a city and zone from The Serpent's Spine (TSS) expansion, which added a new race (Drakkin) along with an entire slew of zones designed for more modern and focused leveling from level 1 to maximum. If you're a non-gate class, picking either home town can make a tiny difference, as it determines where you end up when you use your Origin (EQ's "Hearthstone") ability. The run from Crescent Reach's teleport spot to the nearest PoK port stone might be a little longer or a little shorter than the run from the teleport spot in your race's classic city to its PoK stone. At worst, you'll waste 30 seconds or so every time you teleport, so won't worry too much. If you're in doubt, I recommend picking your race's original city.
Tutorial
If the Tutorial button is pressed down (default), you will start off in a tutorial area which teaches you the ropes and gives you a focused, quest-driven experience from level 1-10. After enduring some awful RP and a simple quest that instantly dings you lvl 2, you are transported to a cave with bankers, merchants, spell merchants and quest NPCs that guide you through some of the basics of the game and send you on quests that give you good xp and a little gear and money. I recommend this to new players, as it's a relaxed area with easy xp.
Getting started and levelingThe screen you'll see when entering EQ through the tutorial
Entering the game and getting a mercenary
When entering the game through the tutorial, go through the first quest to ding lvl 2, and get transported to the tutorial cave with all the NPCs. The first thing you should do is get a mercenary. If you are satisfied with a boring Human mercenary, you can hire it right there in the tutorial, from the Mercenary Liaison NPC (human in silver armor). If you want one of a different race, it's time for a slight detour. To leave the tutorial, Hail the barbarian NPC named Arias right where you enter and type 'ready to leave' in the chat, and you will be teleported to Plane of Knowledge (PoK). You are now in the main hub of the EQ world, where all players gather to bind, sell and buy, do their trade skills, teleport to other parts of the world, bank, or just AFK.
Now open the Find window (Ctrl+F) and look for NPCs called 'XXX Mercenary Liaison', for example, 'Dark Elf Mercenary Liason'. Pick a race that you would like to have your merc show as (female dark elf w00t), then click on the NPC name, and a glowing path should lead you to the liaison. Right-click either the male or female version (determines the sex of the merc you buy), and a box pops up. First, pick the "Journeyman Tier 1" type merc, as they are the best. F2P players will only have access to Apprentice rank mercenaries - pick the highest tier you can. Second, pick the Tank role mercenary, as this will give you smooth sailing solo for the first 60-70 levels without requiring any healing on the merc at all. Tank mercs are immensely powerful and can solo 3-4 mobs at once for you. They can handle red con mobs without breaking a sweat. The stance (agressive/passive/etc) doesn't matter and can be changed later. Click Hire, and boom, you now have a killing machine at your disposal. A small thing to note is that they will not hold agro well at the beginning, and mobs will be hitting you. This gradually gets better, and at around level 30, the tank merc will be like a monster magnet. If you want to let the tank merc take the blows, simply step back out of melee range and the tank merc should be the one getting hit.
You can only own one mercenary at a time (until much later in the game, or by paying real money for extra slots), but the tank merc will pretty much carry you to level 70.
Note: If you've decided to skip the tutorial and start in Crescent Reach, there is a mercenary liaison NPC in Crescent Reach, in the big hut with all the class trainers in the starting area. All of the classic home cities also have liaisons.
Note: A merc counts as a group member, and as such eats experience. When it's you alone with the merc, it will take approximately 40% of the xp (due to group bonuses). They are still worth it at low levels due to the overpoweredness of tank mercs, but at level 60+, start considering if the merc is actually speeding up your killing enough to be worth it. This will depend on your class. Keep in mind that mercs are safety nets that can prevent wipes and allow you to survive pulls of multiple mobs, so it's not just about xp per mob killed and kill time.
At around level 65-70, the superpower of tank mercs start to wane as they can't survive as many mobs at once any longer without healing. Here, consider either going with a cleric merc (synergizes particularly well with a melee class), or look into the damage dealing mercs. If you can heal, a tank merc might still be a good idea. If you don't want to use a merc at all in your grinding, at least get a cleric merc and keep it stashed away for when you need a resurrection or need to fight a tough mob.
Read more abouts mercs here: EQ Zam guide and Almar's EQ merc guide
Hiring a mercenary in PoK
You're now set with the merc. If you want to go back to the tutorial, log out (type /camp or click the 'Camp (Exit)' button), then make sure the Tutorial button is pressed in at the character selection screen. Log in, and you'll be back in the tutorial. Now go through the tutorial as you please and start enjoying the game as a clueless newbie!
leveling
In spite of its name, EQ has never rewarded any significant amount of XP for questing until very recently, but quests have instead mainly been a source of certain powerful items. However, the TSS expansion as previously described actually does contain a full quest path from level 1-70 that you can follow if you wish. Most of them are basic kill, collect and explore quests and aren't really efficient. If you prefer to quest, go ahead and check them out. The path starts in Crescent Reach and mostly follows the zone path I'm going to recommend for mob killing.
Newbie (twinked and buffed) fighting in Crescent Reach. Who can name the twink items?
EQ has a concept of Hot Zones, which are selected zones, rotated yearly or bi-yearly, which give additional xp for mobs you kill in them. The bonus is, I estimate, roughly around 30%, so they're often worth going to.
View a list of current hot zones here
At level 10, you will be done with the tutorial zone. You should now leave the tutorial (finish up the quests if you have any), and again say 'ready to leave' to Arias to get to PoK.
Soulbinding
Once you're back in PoK, go to the eastern side of the zone, find the (Soulbinder) NPC, and tell her 'bind my soul'. You are now bound here, and will respawn in the same spot when you die. If you're a spellcaster, you will get a spell called Bind Affinity later on, that will allow you to bind in any city you please.
Suggested leveling path
Here is a rough recommended path for leveling. Don't take it literally, explore other zones if you wish as there's plenty of easy xp to be had in many, many zones. leveling at least up to 60 is so fast that you won't feel slowed down regardless of where you go.
1-10: Tutorial or the same as 10-25. Alternative: Steamfont Mountains near Ak'anon and the windmills, or any classic newbie area.
1-25 or 10-25: Crescent Reach (CR), the newbie area east of the city. Start in the southeast just outside of the city and work your way north up to the skeleton camp. Lots of fast-respawning mobs and a short path to a city. Alternative: Castle Mistmoore is good from level 20-30.
25-35/40: Blightfire Moors, just next to CR. Many camps with easy mobs. Alternative: The Overthere in Kunark is perfect from 30-40.
35-50: Goru'kar Mesa: Just north of Blightfire Moors, this zone also has some good camps and easy mobs all over the place. If you want a more classic experience, Karnor's Castle can take you from 40-50.
50-65: Grieg's End in Luclin is a mostly deserted dungeon with hundreds of mobs lined up for fast killing and a tight level range, good for 50-60. Alternative: The Hole is a dungeon with an innate experience bonus, good vendor trash drops and fairly easy mobs as it's an ancient zone. At level 50, start in the upper areas, and when you're level 60, you can start doing the lower tunnel/castle area for very decent xp up to lvl 70. Downside: Tunnel area may be camped and doesn't support more than a few players.
65-70: Continue The Hole lower area (great place for AA at lvl 70) or go to Sunderock Springs (hot zone), another outdoors TSS zone.
70-80: Paw in South Karana is a small dungeon with easy mobs all over the place that are very good grind material for non-kiting classes. Alternatively, The Steppes, another outdoors hot zone in TSS. Alternatively, Plane of Fire is an open zone with tons of mobs, ripe for swarming and headshotting for certain classes.
80-85: Direwind Cliffs, yet another outdoors hot zone, or Loping Plains next to Steamfont Mountains. Many more options here, and you are now eligible for grouping in House of Thule content.
85-90: Ashengate, a hot zone dungeon. Alternatively, HoT content.
Somewhere in your 60's, you should be well versed in the game's basics and ready to take a little break from the XP race if you wish, and explore some of the other things you can do in EQ (see later section).
As you level, you will get windows popping up with suggested places to level. Take these with a grain of salt, as they might be dangerous, crap xp, or way out there.
If you want to level via an old school route, such as via classic Faydwer/Antonica/Kunark zones and dungeons, that will also be totally viable, just a tad slower. You will be able to handle the zones solo with your mercenary, and they will most likely be void of other players. The only downsides are greater level range of mobs and longer respawn times in some places. The upside is of course the nostalgia. I recently leveled two new characters up purely through older zones such as Steamfont, Mistmoore, Overthere, Karnor's and Sebilis, and I had no problems at all.
Three goons in their 40s leveling in an old school zone (Karnor's Castle in Kunark)
For more inspiration, see Allakhazam's zone level chart here
Getting more bags
Already when you've saved up a few platinum, or have had some donated to you, you can easily buy some bigger bags. A gnome NPC in PoK named Nelin Signus, located in the northern trader building, sells Deluxe Toolbox, a 10-slot container, for a bit over 1 platinum each. You should quickly buy several of these so you aren't so restricted in your inventory space. Note that in EQ, it's a good idea to keep at least one base inventory slot free (just put a piece of food or whatever you want in it instead), as several quests throughout the game will give you a container to combine certain quest items in, and bags naturally can't be opened while they're inside another bag. But, in today's EQ you can store empty bags within other bags!
Buying bigger bags from the gnome merchant in PoK
If you have enough platinum to spend (around 5k total), I would advise investing in the new 14-slot bags, that are all nearly weightless and have 100% WR. Search the bazaar for "Unexpanded Tailored Legendary", and buy any type that suits you. Now go buy Abu-Kar's Arcane Solution from any (Tailoring Supplies) merchant, combine the solution and the bag in a loom or sewing kit, and bam, you have a 14-slot bag.
Obtaining spells
Spells in EQ must be bought, quested for, or obtained as loot. Almost all essential spells from level 1-85 can be purchased from merchants in PoK. Go to the giant library building in the center of PoK and look for merchants that sell your class' spells.
With the F2P patch, players can now purchase all fundamental spells from level 1-85 from merchants. This is a massive change, as before, there was a very large void of spells between level 60 and 85 where spells were very tough and time-consuming to hunt down. From level 71 and up, all spells have three ranks, the first being a solo/merchant-bought rank, the second group-obtained, and the third raid-obtained. As mentioned, you will only be able to buy rank 1 of the level 70-85 spells, but these will carry you just fine.
A short rundown of the spell ranges, for historic purposes, if you want to save some platinum, or in case you want to look into higher ranks of level 71+ spells.
- 1-50: Mostly bought from merchants in PoK. Some are only found in East Freeport, near the gate to North Ro. Spells 1-10 can be bought in the Tutorial. A few non-essential spells are only found on other vendors in the world, or through quests. Hybrids can buy almost all of their spells easily, pure casters have a tougher time finding spells.
- 51-60: Random drops from Kunark monsters, lvl 60 spells are from bosses mostly. A handful of spells are from Velious and Luclin.
- 61-65: Mobs and bosses in Planes of Power zones drop scrolls that can be exchanged for spells in PoK.
- 66-85: Varying factions and random drops from the appropriate expansions. This level range will prove most difficult to obtain spells in.
- 86-90: Easily obtained via simple quests in HoT. You exchange a tradable, bazaar-buyable item for a spell. You will be armed with a full range of general battle spells through this level range with little work.
- 91-95: VoA spells, significantly harder to obtain, requiring drops from named mobs or progression work mostly. Only a few can be bought off the bat.
Search for your class' spells on Allakhazam here
Skills
Almost everything you do in EQ is skill based, from swinging swords to casting spells of various types. On your character pane, click the Skills button to see an overview of all your abilities. Certain skills can be hotkeyed - click on the skill, then on the Make Hotkey button, and place the button on your hotbar. There are both passive skills that enhance your fighting or spellcasting capabilities, and activated skills such as Disarm, Begging, Forage, Bind Wound and Disarm Trap. Most (but not all) of these are fairly useless. Monks base a good amount of their damage on their kicks, and all melee should use kick and/or bash when in combat.
Melee will generally find it easy to keep up with skills, although if you get to level 30 with a 1H Blunt weapon then suddenly switch to 2H Blunt or 1H Slashing, you will spend some time working on the new skill.
Spellcasters have it slightly worse, and some of the schools (Abjuration and Conjuration for example) will take you lots of practice casting to skill up.
New melee combat skills are taught to you automatically as you level. Around level 30 or so, you should have all your fundamental skills, such as Dodge, Riposte, Dual Wield, etc., depending on your class.
Dying
Dun-dun-dunnnnn. LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
EQ was historically a brutal game to die in, not only losing a significant chunk of experience, but your corpse with all your items and inventory was left where you died, and you respawned naked at your bind point. You now respawn with all your gear and inventory, leaving only the experience loss (about 8% of a level) as the penalty. There are a few easy ways to deal with this on your own now, without having to pester a cleric:
1) If you have a healer (cleric) mercenary, you can travel back to your corpse, and providing you're not in combat, it will cast the best resurrection spell it has on you, which will restore 96% of the lost experience, from level 56 and onwards. At lower levels it will restore less xp.
2) If you are unable or unwilling to get to your corpse, you can go to the Guild Lobby, where Corpse Summoner NPCs can summon your corpse to you in exchange for a token that costs a little platinum. With the corpse at your feet, you can have it resurrected either by your mercenary, another player's mercenary, or a real player with the ability to res.
3) Use the "Expedient Recovery" veteran AA, which summons your corpse and does a 100% res. See later section about veterean rewards.
Improving the user interfaces, maps and common customizationUser Interface
The default UI you are presented with when logging into EQ for the first time is a bit of an abomination. EQ has a simple UI engine with no scripting, merely a large set of controls that can be re-skinned, re-arranged, moved and resized. Some things can be changed via XML files in the EQ \uifiles directory, some things can be changed in-game. Notably, you can move and resize any window, which is nice.
You can browse custom UIs (or just separate UI elements if you wish) on eqinterface.com. Note that EQ UIs break over time as the default UI goes through changes, so take note of the date on a UI before you go wild over it. Some pieces here and there will still function after several years, and you can also hack the XML files yourself to patch them up. A few complete UI packages:
ZlizUI - My own UI compilation, Rain of Fear compatible. Minimalist and functional.
WatUI - minimalistic and clean (partly broken with RoF)
Sparxx
VertUI
AYA
Ang's
Sha'kahr interface - artsy.
Example of the WatUI. Note that all windows can be freely moved around, and hotbar row/column configuration changed in-game
As of writing this, a major patch has just been released that breaks many UIs. It may take some time for UI authors to catch up, although some UIs will undoubtedly be left in the dust and never work again.View a guide on installing an EQ UI here
Some UIs are more than just skins and recolors, and often rearrange the contents of many windows, such as the character panel. Some are for the worse, some for the better. For example, with the WatUI, I don't like his bazaar window, merchant window, bank window and several more. If you're unhappy with a UI window's changed layout, simply go to your everquest directory, then to \uifiles\<ui_name> directory (for example c:\games\everquest\uifiles\watui) and delete the .xml file that corresponds to the UI window. As an example, delete the file called "EQUI_BazaarWnd.xml" and reload the UI to make the default bazaar window show up (which will still be re-skinned to match the rest).
Maps
The game ships with simple maps, and fans have taken the time to improve the maps a bit, adding NPC names and locations of named spawns and quest objectives. The main site for EQ maps is Mapfiend. Go to the download page, select "ALL Maps", and click the Download Map Pack button. Extract the contents of the zipfile to a new subdirectory in the \maps directory (for example: "c:\games\everquest\maps\mapfiend"). Once logged in, choose the subdirectory you made at the top of the map window.
The map window can be resized, and while the map won't really scale as you'd expect, it will allow you to zoom in and view more of the map without it being tiny and gritty to look at.
You can customize maps yourself with the in-game map tool (click the icon with the sextant), or hack the text-based map files.
Enabling the classic character models
With the Luclin expansion, the main character models were remodelled, largely to the dismay of the community. Many feel they look out of place and have terrible animations. Thankfully, the new (also called Luclin models) and old models co-exist, and you can re-enable the use of the old ones. There are two ways to disable the new models:
1) In the EQ launchpad, after logging in, there's a little gear icon in the lower left corner. Click it, choose Game Configuration, and a box pops up. Click Next, and in the next form you can disable all the new models.
Disabling the Luclin models
2) Go to your EQ directory and open the "eqclient.ini" file. Here, you should see a list of lines like this:
UseLuclinHumanMale=TRUE
UseLuclinHumanFemale=TRUE
Replace all TRUE with FALSE, save it, and (re)start EQ.
Note: You will not be able to use most mounts unless you have the Luclin models enabled for your race. The only race I've found that isn't subjected to this rule are humans, and models made in newer times such as frogloks and drakkin only have one model. Alternatively, you can use certain illusion items (like AoN) to still be allowed to mount, but you'll lose the illusion and mount every time you zone. Particularly if you're a spellcaster, I recommend sucking it up and dealing with the new models, as mounts are extremely useful for you. If you use modern mounts (non-Horses), you can keep using the old horse and elemental (magician pet) models.
Common UI niggles and FAQ
The default key for opening the options window is O. Here you'll find a myriad of options and buttons to dig through.
Q: How do I copy the UI layout and settings betweeen characters?
A: Go to options, click the "Copy Layout" button in the top left corner, and choose the UI layout for another character to copy. It'll takes around 10 seconds for the copy to complete.
Q: How do I disable the Voice Chat bar?
A: Go to options, click the Voice tab, and click the "Disable Voice Chat" checkbox.
Q: How do I customize the hotbars?
A: Right-click the rim of a hotbar and options will show to create and alter the hotbars. You can also resize the hotbars by dragging the corner like a Microsoft Windows window, in order to rearrange it to have a different row/column layout instead of 1x12.
Q: Help, I can only load 8 spells into my spell bar!:
A: This is part of the challenge of being a spell caster in EQ, choosing your spells before you enter battle. You can invest in AAs to increase this maximum to 12 later on. You can also save and load sets of spells by right-clicking on the button at the bottom of the spell bar.
Q: I accidentally pressed some button and a UI window disappeared.
A: Go to options, Keys tab, and select the UI category from the combobox. Dig through the list to find the binding for the UI element you have closed by accident. You can sort the rows in the list by clicking the column headers, either sorting by description or keybinding.
Alternate Advancement (AA)At level 51, you can begin funnelling between 0 and 100% your experience gains into a secondary xp pool, which is called AA for short. This adds a whole extra level (metaphorically speaking) to the game, as you can continue earning AA experience even at maximum level. As you earn points, you can spend them on abilities that can either be passive or activated abilities that can do all sorts of stuff, like enhance your spell casting or melee attacks, allow you to cast new spells for no mana, give you more spell slots, extra hitpoints or stats, and much, much more. Most AA abilities are ranked (buy rank 1, then rank 2, etc.), some are tiered (must buy ability X before you can buy Y), and all ranks are level- and expansion-restricted.
Google "everquest <class> aa guide" and you should be able to find some good starting tips. Beware of outdated info, note the date.
At level 51, the first AA you should grind points for and buy is called Innate Run Speed (on the General tab), 3 ranks for 1 point each. This allows you to run faster without speed buffs, which is gold. From there, it depends on your class which is best.
When to take a break from leveling and grind AA is a debated topic. You will not suddenly find yourself useless because you have levelled too high and not picked up enough AA, but there is at least a couple hundred AA for each class that are "mandatory", in the sense that they, for very little cost, greatly enhance your class and add immensely useful abilities or power.
A good spot to stop a bit and grind AAs is level 59 (or 60 if you wish), as some of the first core AAs from the system's introduction open up. For example, monks can reduce the cooldown time on their Feign Death ability at lvl 59, rangers get Archery enhancing AAs, etc. Keep your eye out for essential AAs on the way, and at level 70, stop and go through the list and see if anything useful opens up. A very good opportunity again opens up at level 80, where you can, as earlier described, equip some of the latest, super-powered gear, which will make you very powerful against current mobs and allow you to grind quickly. At level 80 I would recommend grinding out at least 400-500 AA points, depending on your class, some may even want to grind twice that.
There's no online calculator that I know of to get an easy overview of your class' AAs. The best thing you can do is to save up 12 AA points, then click the "Can Purchase" button in the AA window to filter out any AAs that you are ineligible for. Until very late in the game, no AA costs more than 12 points, so this should show you all available at your current level. You can also filter by expansion to get a rough overview of AAs available from certain level ranges, but some AAs are sneaky and require a lower level than the expansion was made for.
AA has been made very easy to grind these days. There is a sliding scale AA xp bonus implemented that gives you a 500% bonus when you start out, and scales down to 0% bonus at 2500 AA points. 2500 points is a LOT, and perhaps with the exception of Shadow Knight, you should be able to utilize your class to its fullest potential at around 1000-1500 AA at high levels, some even earlier. Shamans for example have it really easy and can get by fine with 600 at maximum level in group content.
For the same reason, be careful not to be too OCD about buying everything, because the more AAs you have, the slower the grind gets. There are many, many totally useless or borderline useless AAs that are a waste. All AAs in the General that increase your stats for example are fairly worthless. Search online before you buy anything.
PotionsPlayers can craft and buy an array of potions with effects of varying use, depending on your class.
The main range of level-tiered potions can all be bought from the merchants Elwin Razorfur (low level potions) and Ralkor Stoneclaw (higher level potions) in the western trader building of PoK. Alchemist Adeben on the 2nd floor in the city of Crescent Reach sells ranks I-X (1-10) of all potions.
- Distillate of Alacrity: Applies a melee haste buff, up to 50% at higher levels. An absolute must to buy and upgrade as you level for a melee class with no other access to haste buffs.
- Distillate of Celestial Healing: Applies a heal over time (HoT) to you. Good for reducing downtime while grinding mobs. 2 min reuse time.
- Distillate of Clarity: Applies a mana regen buff to you. Very good for mana users.
- Distillate of Divine Healing: Performs an instant heal on you. Only use for emergency situations, otherwise plan ahead and use Celestial Healing potions. 2 min reuse time.
- Distillate of Health: Applies a buff that increases your hitpoints and AC. Not really worth it to keep buying. If you use a healer mercenary, it will provide you with a better buff instead.
- Distillate of Replenishment: Applies a buff that increases your hitpoint regeneration. Note: Ranks I-X can only be found in Crescent Reach.
- Distillate of Spirituality: Applies a buff that increases your hitpoint and mana regeneration. Both effects are much less powerful than their equivalent level separate Clarity and Replenishment potions. Note: Ranks I-X can only be found in Crescent Reach.
- Cloudy Potion: Grants invisibility for a while, may suddenly fall off. Sold by Mira Frostpouch in PoK, east side near the Plane of Tranquility port stone.
- Distillate of Skinspikes (ranks I-XVI): Applies a damage shield buff to you. These are extremely powerful at low levels and do a relatively high amount of damage to mobs if they strike you. Well worth to buy (try asking in guild for cheaper crafting) for the first 50 levels where monster have low hitpoints. They suddenly get very expensive to craft past rank V, as they begin requiring farmed ingredients to make, so stick with ranks I-V.
- Essence of <race>: Gives you an illusion buff, making you look like another race.
- Philter of Major Translocation: Gates you to your bind point.
- Philter of the Ant: Shrinks you. Can be nice for large races. Alternatively, look after clickie items with infinite charges of shrink.
- Philter of the Wolf: Applies the Spirit of Wolf buff, increasing your movement speed. Good at low and medium levels, becomes less useful as you gain the runspeed AAs later on in your 50s.
Dealing with all the crap monsters dropMobs in EQ drop a lot of items, and your bags will quickly fill up. Loot from random monsters can be categorized as follows:
- Defiant armor and weapons. Random drop from any mob in the game, with roughly a 5-10% drop chance. You will probably only run into a few useful pieces along your way, as you level so fast these days.
- Quest items, labelled "Quest". Almost all quest items drop whether or not you have the quest for them. Some quests can then be completed later, although many modern quests are designed so that it's part of the objective to actually loot the quest item, not just turn it in. It varies. Some really old school wearable items are marked as Quest, as they're used in equally old quests.
- Tradeskill drops. If you inspect an item and it says "This item can be used in tradeskills", well, then it can be used in tradeskills. There are two sub-categories of items here:
- World-wide, level-tiered drops of silk, ore, poison components (leaves and herbs), jewelcrafting gems, animal hide, and research components such as scrolls and powder.
- Rarer drops that are specific either to an expansion, a zone or mob type.
The world-wide drops are most interesting, as they are your ticket to fairly simple skilling up, and if you stash all you obtain on your way, you will actually be able to raise your skill substially later on. To be more specific, the items are:
- XXX Silk, for example: Crude Silk, Simple Silk, Natural Silk, etc. Used in tailoring through all skill levels.
- XXX Animal Pelt, for example: Rough Animal Pelt, Flawless Animal Pelt, etc. Used in tailoring through all levels.
- XXX Ore, for example: Tin ore, Silvril Ore, Thalium ore: Used in smithing through all skill levels, and to an extent in pottery.
- Uncut XXX, for example: Uncut Goshenite, Uncut Black Sapphire, Uncut Alexandrite. Used in jewelcrafting above ~200 skill.
- Rogue-only leaves and herbs, for example: Fresh Delphinium, Fresh Laburnum, Pristine Oleander: Used in rogue-only poison making through all levels, as far as I know.
- Raw XXX Hide, XXX Binding Powder, plus dozens of variants of items with a papyrus/scroll-type icon of varying shades: Used in research. Research is insanely complex, so I'll leave you to the tradeskill guide linked in the Tradeskill section.
It will be hell to keep all these components in early levels, but I recommend storing as much as you can and have interest in (a melee might want to skip saving research components and only a rogue should save poison components), as you'll be thankful later if you decide to dabble in tradeskills. Some epic quests also require a bit of tradeskilling. - Vendor trash. If it can't be equipped, is not an agumentation, is not No Trade, is not labelled Quest, and doesn't say it can be used in a tradeskill, chances are it's a dedicated vendor trash item. Note that all the classic gems, such as Diamonds, Blue Diamonds and Black Sapphires are now considered vendor trash, and you will see vendors in busy areas with hundreds of them. They bring in very nice amounts of cash, and if you ever need for them tradeskills for some reason, just visit a busy vendor or check the bazaar.
QuestingFor some years, EQ has had a "real" quest system with a quest journal tracking your active quests (also called Tasks) and objectives. You still talk to NPCs via the [keywords] to get a quest, but once it's in your quest log, the quest evolves as you go through the steps. It's a pretty neat system as it allows for quests to contain many steps (some have 20+ steps), often without having to yo-yo back and forth betweeen the quest giver and the environment. You can also preview the final reward.
All older quests (including the first epics) still follow the ancient system of merely talking to NPCs and trading them items. These quests can still be multiquested. Thankfully, NPCs no longer eat items that aren't useful to them, so there's no danger of accidentally handing an NPCs the wrong item or vice versa. You will get any item back if the NPC has no use for it.
As mentioned in the leveling section, questing can be mixed in with grinding to form a meaningful way of leveling, but only the TSS zone path as far as I know it. Only at level 80, quests from the latest content start rewarding good xp that contribute significantly.
Example of a quest (actually a mission, same principle) with multiple objectives that unfold as your progress
GroupingLike most modern MMORPG's, EQ has a built-in group finding tool which is brought up via /lfg. Usually zones from the recent expansions are populated, while people mostly level solo or by multiboxing in less recent zones. It's not worth it to spend a lot of time finding groups at low levels other than for the social aspect or if you're playing with a friend, but on the other hand, go ahead and group if you can find one, because thanks to group xp bonuses, grouping does not significantly slow down your xp gain if you also mow down mobs faster.
When you get to level 100, you might be able to find a group in RoF. However, be warned that a lot of content is still done in-guild or by multiboxers, and it can be hard to find groups.
The latest bunch of expansions have a rather clear-cut set of tiers of group content, where it's expected that you go through them in order, roughly. Each tier has increasing difficulty and rewards better gear along the way.
A cool thing about modern EQ zones is that all zones are fundamentally like you remember dungeons in the old days: Lots of trash, and named/rare spawns with placeholders. Even the entry zone of the HoT expansion has many named mob spawns all over the place (with placeholders of course, and the named is an uncommon spawn), which will drops nice loot. Outdoor zones are thus no longer just for soloing gimps purely grinding xp.
On a side note, items in EQ have been balanced/normalized for several years now. Gone are the days of a boss dropping either a godly item or pure junk. Haste seems to be the only stat omitted from this rule, and appears a bit randomly here and there. Also, spell focus effects are very beneficial to spellcasters and also aren't normalized.
MissionsMissions are instanced versions of zones or dungeons made for groups of 3-6 players. You begin a mission by talking to an NPC (which often have a (Missions) tag under their name), and there may or not be some requirements for being to request a mission, such as having completed a few quests first. One person (at least) must be eligible to request the mission, and the rest may or may not need certain requirements, such as a minimum level. Requesting a mission works just like getting a quest, you go through some RP chat and finally type the right [keyword] to the NPC to get it. After requesting the mission, everyone will get a quest (a "Shared Task") in their quest journal, which is the contents of the mission. Each person must then separately say a keyword to the NPC to enter, after which they get teleported to the instance. The quest objectives of the mission will typically involve explores a bit, killing several mobs, collecting some items, and killing some boss mobs. At the end, you typically get xp, money, faction and access to a chest with loot.
Missions in HoT and VoA result in guaranteed loot drops at the end and, along with a decent chunk of experience and platinum. Missions are often what people do for loot, faction and, to a lesser extent, xp in the high-end group game. The mobs in missions aren't necessarily that much more difficult than equal tier open zoned and named.
Note again that you must have a minimum of 3 players in your group in order to be able to request a mission, so you can't request them solo or with your mercenary. You can request them if you dual box and thus have 2 players and 2 mercs up, or you can ask another person to join your group while you request the mission. After entering, the extra player can leave and you can go do the mission on your own.
RaidingThe raiding game is completely separate from the group game, with its own instances, progression path and tiers of gear. I don't know anything about modern EQ raiding, so maybe someone else can fill in. What I know is that tier 1 raid gear is approximately as good as the highest tier group gear.
True raids (not including really old ones like Planes of Power, Velious or earlier) require a minimum of 6 players in a group to start the instance.
MountsSince Luclin, EQ has had mounts. Mounts provide the following ups and downs:
- Faster travel, ranging from slower than running speed (no joke) to several times faster.
- Casters can cast spells and meditate while sitting on a horse, omitting the need to sit down during combat to speed up mana regen.
- You can melee while on a mount and perform certain innate special attacks, but most melee special attacks won't work, and you can't feign death or camp for example. Mounts are thus not suitable for melee fighting.
- Mounts take a small second to slow down and stop fully when you stop running, and are thus clunky for navigating precisely. When you're in combat, they take even longer to slow down.
- Mounts have a casting time of 3 seconds, and cannot be cast in combat.
- You will consume food and drink faster while on a mount.
All accounts, as far as I know, should be eligible for at least one free mount via the /claim window after you've bought the latest expansion. Look for the "Verdant Hedgerow Leaf"; this is a fast mount that also gives you a very nice AC, HP and mana buff.
The BazaarThe bazaar is a special zone where players can setup a real character to act as a merchant (trader), allowing other people to buy items from you. The bazaar is accessed through a gate in the northwest corner of PoK. Head towards the hub teleporter, and you are ported to the trading hub. There are bankers in the center, and the zone branches out into smaller rooms (for anti-lag purposes, the original bazaar was one huge room), where you will find people selling their stuff. To bring up the bazaar search interface, type /bazaar or press the assigned hotkey. You can now search for items by name, level, price and through categories. Click the item you're after, and then the Find Trader button. A path lights up that leads you to the trader. Right-click on them like a merchant and you can buy their items. Be careful with certain stackable items, that you don't accidentally buy too many and waste your money.
To set up your own trader, you must first of all own a gold subscription. If you have that, you must buy one or more Trader's Satchel (note that they weigh a lot) from Merchant Tekrama, who is in the first round room of the bazaar as you enter from PoK. They cost very little. Put the items you wish to sell in Trader's Satchels. Now go to one of the smaller rooms in the bazaar, and walk onto one of the wooden floors. Type /trader, and a window opens up where you can set the price you want for each of the items you have in your Trader's Satchels. Now press the Begin Trader button, and you are now a merchant that other players can buy from.
Note that while in the bazaar, you cannot become encumbered (carrying too much weight), and you do not consume food nor drink.
Tradeskills-> Click here for the ultimate tradeskill leveling guide
EQ has the following tradeskill setup:
- Baking, Brewing, Fletching, Jewelcraft, Pottery, Smithing, Tailoring - The main 7 tradeskills, capped at 300 skill. Starting out, you can only increase one tradeskill past 200 skill, but buying the cheap New Tanaan Crafting Mastery (General tab), you can increase the number of tradeskills you can advance past 200 up to the maximum.
- Fishing - Capped at 200. You can catch fish (plus other funny junk) and use them in Baking.
- Alchemy - Shaman only potion-crafting.
- Make Poison - Rogue only poison-crafting.
- Tinkering - Gnome only gizmos.
- Spell Research - Crafting spells and tomes. Historically only for casters, but melee can now also research. Researching spells is entirely unnecessary these days as all modern spells come from vendors, group or raid content, but on the other hand, researching can also craft virtually any spell in the game, which gives an alternate route to spells that may be difficult to obtain due to coming from old factions that require a lot of work and such.
After you've learned a recipe, which you can also add to a favorites list for easier access, you merely need to have its ingredients somewhere in your inventory in order to perform the combine. Click the Combine button, and you either fail or succeed, the resulting item(s) being placed on your cursor.
The organized tradeskill UI (slightly customized), here shown with tailoring
There are still trivial rates on all recipes that indicate at which skill level you'll be able to reliably craft an item. Generally, there is always a 5% change of succeeding any combine, and at the other end of the spectrum always a 5% risk of failing - except when your skill is more than 100 points above the trivial for a recipe.
A while ago, tradeskill trophies were introduced. There are items that evolve as you craft and increase your skill in a tradeskill significantly. Read about tradeskill trophies here.
Tradeskills as you level will be largely useless and a money sink, with the exception of Fletching, which is a cheap and easy source of arrows. Some epics also require a medium amount of tradeskilling. The state of modern tradeskills is sadly a bit predictable and spreadsheet-like, but there are good news as well. Some quick facts:
- Tradeskills at the highest levels can craft armor and weapons that are very good, on par with medium-high level group content for its relevant expansion, with ingredients that can be obtained as random drops from entry-level content. This is mainly the cultural armor and weapons, and it is crafted through a combination of tailoring, smithing, pottery, tinkering, fletching and jewelcrafting.
- Baking and Brewing is used for making stat food and drink, i.e. food and drink that boosts your stats to a minor degree.
- The trivials for the past many expansions' high level items has gone through the roof, and are currently at around 500. That means that even with maxed skill and maxed tradeskill trophy, you will often fail expensive combines.
MultiboxingEQ is a good game to multibox in, and will allow you to explore much more, and even high-end group content on your own. Multiboxing means playing two or more characters at the same time. Classes in EQ are still unique enough that the synergies between two different classes can massively enhance your ability to kill stuff and even complete missions on your own.
EQ's slower combat pace and multi-spellcasting macro system (cast spell A, wait 3 seconds, cast spell B, wait 3 seconds, etc.) makes it a perfect fit for multiboxing, as you can combine a melee with a supporting spellcaster, without losing too much efficiency. Additionally, since each character can have a mercenary, going from one to two accounts makes you go from 2 to 4 characters, two of them being mercs of course. This allows you to start missions on your own (requires a minimum of 3 players in a group), and lets you, for example, pick both a tank and a healer mercenary.
A classic setup is a melee class + shaman, which several guildmates run. Shamans are a multitool while the melee grinds mobs. Many other combinations will work absolutely fine, although I don't recommend boxing more than one melee, as they require positioning in order to do damage.
The recommended tool for greatly enhancing multiboxing is ISBoxer (free trial available). You can however, get started without it. ISBoxer can also run EQ in true full screen windowed mode, which is very nice.
With EQ being free to play at the base, I would recommend dabbling in multiboxing very early on, as it's a ton of fun. Doing it right from the start if you're a brand new player might add a bit of extra confusion, but if you're already an experienced player, it is very optimal to level two characters equally. Alternatively, wait until you've gotten a feel for the game on your own, then explore multiboxing.
For reference, I currently box a monk+shaman with tank+healer merc, and I am going through the second tier of HoT group content with no big problems. It does take some gear, training and the right ISBoxer+macro setup, but it shows that it's possible. I also recently started a ranger+magician team, which is great fun too. Almost anything goes!
Mercenary advancementIf you read the earlier guide on starting out, you should have bought a mercenary early on. Don't worry, you can still hire them at any level, they cost a bit of platinum to hire. Starting around level 14, they will also cost a small amount of money to keep active, billed every 15 minutes. At maximum level, it's around 40 plat per 15 minutes for the starting rank, so it's not much.
You may remember how you hired a Journeyman Tier 1 (T1) mercenary. This can be improved up to tier 5 (T5) through questing. The quests you need to complete are all in Korascian Warrens in the SoD expansion, and they are as follows, with no previous requirements. I think they require around level 75 to start.
1) Find Your Allies. Tip: You can pick up the items while invisible.
2) Whom Frogs Destroy. Tip: You can feign death to avoid fighting the mobs if they attack you.
3) The Wrath of Korascian
4) Disrupt the Siege and Champions No More at the same time. The first one is a tough quest to solo due to heavy mob density up north where the catapults are.
5) Retinue of the Frog-God
These five quests should be soloable around level 85-90 with a mercenary and at least HoT T1 gear, although some help will definitely make it go faster. After this, you are eligible for a mission: Murdunk's Last Stand. In the mission, and endless stream of mobs, about one per minute, spawns and walks through a set path. After killing 35 of them, you have completed the mission and you can gate out. You are now eligible to buy a T5 merc. Simply dismiss your current merc and visit the mercenary liasion of your choice. Note that a T5 merc at high levels cost around 100p per 15 minutes to keep active, so don't keep them out unless you need them. They are worth it, though, and are godly in group content when seen in relation to how little effort they require.
Guild Lobby and Guild HallGuild Lobby
The guild lobby is a zone accessed via gate in the southwest corner of PoK. The guild lobby is a small zone, with the following features:
- Buff durations do not tick down while in this zone.
- Corpse Summoner NPCs in the west and east sides of the zone can summon your corpse to you.
- There are message boards that open up a guild finder / recruitment UI.
- The NPC Magus Alaria can teleport you to the wayfarer camp in Nedaria's Landing. From that camp, further teleports are available.
The Guild Hall is a small, instanced zone for guild members only, that has a guild bank, merchants, a teleporter, an augmentation sealer, and tradeskill containers. Welcome to the guild cave!
Most useful is the gnome Zelfmin Werlikanin in the southeast corner. He is a merchant that sells various stones, and after buying one, you trade it back to him. To your left, the sparkling blue teleportation device will then teleport you to the zone corresponding to the stone you gave him.
Player housingPlayer housing was introduced with House of Thule. I haven't used it much, but it's basically a bunch of instanced zones where up to around 70 players can each buy a house and fill it with items, both real weapons and armor, and dedicated decorative items.
Read about player housing here
The housing area is accessed off the Guild Lobby (via PoK); in the northwest corner is a gate to the housing areas.
Marketplace, claims and veteran rewardsMarketplace
The Marketplace is an in-game store (essentially a browser window), where you can buy all sorts of stuff for Station Cash, which can be bought with real money, and which is also given to you monthly if you have a gold sub, plus during various special events and bonuses. Stuff you can buy includes:
- Cosmetic items such as pets, ornaments (augs that makes your weapon show differently), housing items, and clickies with fireworks for example.
- Mounts of various colors and speeds.
- Account services such as expansions, server transfer, gender/race/name change and more. These all work very well and almost instantly.
- Defiant armor packages (don't waste money of this).
- Potions that increase your xp gained, chance of tradeskill success, and all sorts of other stuff. Some of these border "paying to win", but it's up to you if you want to spend money on them.
Type /claim and a window pops up (might take a little while to load the first time) with a list of items your account is eligible for. Resubscribing veterans should find all sorts of random stuff that you get when buying an expansion, such as a mount, armor packages, teleport clickies, cosmetic items, XP potions, food, and some very nice bags (Dreamweave Satchel if you bought HoT and Traveler's Rucksack if you bought VoA). Some can only be claimed once per account, but might be flagged Heirloom so you can transfer it around to other characters. Other might say 999 quantity in the claim window, meaning that you can claim it on 999 characters on your account, so essentially on every character you ever make.
Veteran rewards
Veteran rewards are special abilities given to players, one per year they have been subscribed to the game, not necessarily consecutively. Returning players may find that they are eligible for some of these.
First, type /played, and the last line of text output will tell you how many years and days your account is entitled to. The year figure indicates how many rewards you are eligible for, and also for how many characters on your account you may claim the rewards for. Note: For me, I initially had an entitlement of 2 years and change when I first resubscribed back in 2009, then a few months later it suddenly jumped to 6 years.
Click here for a full guide to Veteran Rewards
If you feel certain that you are going to play the character you're on a fair amount of time and want to spend a set of veteranrewards on it, type /veteranreward, confirm, and you now get an appropriate number of new abilities in your AA window, on the Special tab.
Rewards vary in usefulness. The most prominent one is the 1st year reward, Lesson of the Devoted, which gives double xp for 30 minutes. Others are borderline useless, and some only situationally useful. Don't worry too much if you're not eligible for any.
Epic weaponsEpic weapons were released with the Kunark expansion and were at the time, immensely powerful weapons, one for every class. These old "1.0" epic quests are 99% unchanged, and many still involve insane camps, rare drops, getting drops off bosses and lots of travel. But, at least most of the zones will be empty and the content 100% soloable starting already at level 60. The clicky effect on epic 1.0 is mostly useless these days. They will send you on some long journeys and make you explore lots of areas you may never have seen before, so I highly recommend doing them for the experience itself. Start investigating your class' epic at level 50 (search Allakhazam for "monk epic" for example) if it sounds interesting to you.
Epics evolved into two new versions later on, called 1.5 and 2.0, the two which are fundamentally the same, the difference being that the 2.0 is more powerful than 1.5 and requires a raid drop. Back in the day, I believe the 1.5 was meant for groups/casual guilds, and the 2.0 meant for raiders. Of course, most of the content is trivial these days, only the final quest item of the 2.0 epic still requires a bunch of people. All 1.5 and 2.0 epics have a clicky effect (inventory clickable) that is to this very day still useful for all classes, as they provide percentage-based scaling buffs of some sort, that stack with almost everything. As an example, the monk epic increases the monks hitpoints by 25% and adds a melee proc that does damage. The shaman effect is a group buff that gives everyone a 500 hp/tick regen and increases the power of their critical strikes greatly.
Starting the 1.5 epic requires that you have either completed the 1.0 epic, or have completed a rather simple "1.5 prequest", which shouldn't take long. If you choose to do the prequest to get ahead, you can always go back and do the 1.0 epic later. You should start working on your epic 1.5 around level 65-70.
Search Allakhazam for epic weapon quests
Stuff to do besides levelingEQ today is a game where you will experience no more than 5% of what the game has to offer if you just power through it and purely level. EQ has a rich history and many expansions, plus a level of character building many times richer than other MMORPGs. Here are some suggestions of things to do!
- Get your epic weapons.
- Gear up! Check the bazaar for stuff, do missions and quests, get Dream Mote gear at level 80.
- Work on your AA.
- Progress through an expansion of your choosing. It can be an old expansion like The Buried Sea, or you can, at high levels and with help, work your way through House of Thule and Veil of Alaris content. Both will reward you with very useful gear, money and achievements.
- Farm or buy augmentations. Augmentations (augs) are like gems you put into your armor, but much more advanced than WoW gems and can any type of stat, proc or effect. They can removed again from armor and reused. Look at comprehensive lists of augs here (mainly melee augs, here (high level augs, and search for augs on eqclickies.com's aug searcher. To put an aug into a piece of gear, go to an augmentation sealer (looks like a bird bath - the guild hall and the bazaar have one), click it, then put the aug and the piece of gear in it and click Insert.
- Hunt for "clickies", which are items with a right-click effect. EQ has from the start and to this day had items with myriads of effects, such as invisibility, shrink, damage shields, heals, nukes, levitation, haste, and much more. Even melee classes can become a spell utility belt. Search EQ Clickies for stuff.
- Work on your tradeskills and tradeskill trophies.
- Complete the hot zone mini-quests offered by Franklin Teek in the west side of PoK. These reward items, xp and a nice chunk of platinum. Also look for Skal Nethus nearby, who offers longer hot zone quests that reward an augmentation.
- Start an alt and explore a new class.
- Check out Multiboxing. Either start a character of a class that complements your main, or start a new team of lvl 1s and have tons of fun leveling up.
- Explore old world zones. Take a trip through old dungeons, right up to the end boss and slaughter everything in there. Explore every nook of Lower Guk or Befallen. Take a stroll in Sebilis all the way down to Trakanon and kill him if he's up. Waltz through Temple of Veeshan or the planes. Visit every island in Ocean of Tears and every platform in Kelethin.
- Do old quests for the fun of it. Hail random NPCs or look up the quests for some of those legendary old items such as Hero Bracers, Paw of Opolla or Ghoulbane.
- Hunt for all your spells, old and new.
Links and resourcesA challenge of EQ today is to find relevant, up-to-date information online. In general, google is your friend. However, remember that a lot of online EQ content is outdated, so always look at the date of a forum post, comment, website or article before you draw any conclusions.
General websites
Allakhazam (ZAM) - The original EQ database which is still the most widely used. Many guides for quests, NPCs, items, camps and such, even for recent content. A premium account is required for a tiny subset of features, such as performing an advanced item search.
Notable pages on Zam:
- Spell list - Find all your class' spells here.
- Directions - Find your way to most zones.
- Emotes - Various emotes and slash commands.
- Tribute - The tribute system explained.
- Current Hot Zones
Lucy - A more raw database primarily of spells, but also items. If you want the technical details of a spell, search here.
EQItems / 13th floor - Item database with advanced, free searching.
Almar's EQ guides - Recently written, up-to-date and excellent guides to returning and new players. Covers a lot of things to get started. His class descriptions might be a bit out of touch with reality.
The Magician's Tower Returning Player FAQ - Lots of general info for a returnee, mainly written with magicians in mind.
EQ Traders's Corner - All about tradeskills. Their search on the front page is gold for finding the use of any tradeskill component or recipe, and the complete tradeskill guide on the forums is the go-to resource for leveling up tradeskills.
Rasper's Repository - Player made guide for each of the many recent expansions. Includes the intended progression path, list of quests and missions, gear overview and more. Extremely useful particularly for the latest two expansions, HoT and VoA.
EQ Resource - kind of like Rasper's, not quite as extensive though. Has better maps showing the location of quest objectives.
Magelo - Online player profiles ("armory"), also contains a database of items, mobs and recipes to an extent, but not as useful as Zam.
Fanra's EverQuest Wiki - General EQ wiki, some content rather outdated, some recent stuff is okay.
EQ Clickies (goes down once in a while) - comprehensive searching of items with click effects, as well as augs.
raidloot.com - Searchable loot database, primarily focused on end-game raid loot.
Samanna's Reference Desk - Originally a shaman website, but has a bunch of general guides and data for various stuff, such as levels of run speed, spell stacking, faction, and more.
EQ Newbie FAQ - Various guides and articles.
EQ Players - SOE's offical EQ news and contents website. It's pretty shitty, as expected. The only neat thing is that you can search the armory for pretty much any character that has been logged in for the past decade or so, and see their level, stats and gear.
EQRaidWiki and EQ raiding strategies - Modern raid boss strategies.
EQ Commands - list of /slash commands, emotes, pet commands and more.
EQ AA Search - database of all ranks of all AAs, for the majority of classes.
UI customization and tools
Mapfiend - Better maps.
EQ Interface - Custom user interfaces, both complete sets and smaller elements of the UI.
GamParse - The best dps-parsing tool for EQ.
Forums (mainly class forums)
EQ class websites and forums aren't the bustling hive of activity they have been. There are a few that stand out, though, and as EQ generally changes at a glacial pace, many old forums are well worth searching through for information. Tip: Use google's "site" keyword to search in a specific domain only, for example: "shaman spells site:crucible.samanna.net". Use the date filter on google to get more recent content.
Official EQ forums - Fairly decent activity.
Official class forums, Archived official class forums
Bard: The Concert Hall (new) and The Concert Hall (old archives)
Beastlord: The Beastlord's Den
Berserker: GoBerserker
Druid: The Druid's Grove and The Druid's Grove Archives
Cleric: EQ Clerics and EverQuest Clerics
Enchanter: The Runes
Magician: The Magician's Tower, also see The Mage Compendium
Monk: Monkly Business
Necromancer: Necrotalk
Ranger: EQ Outrider
Rogue: The Safehouse
Shaman and Paladin: The Spirit Realm (Samanna's)
Shadow Knight: Evilgamer
Warrior: The Steel Warrior.
Wizard: Graffe's - Inactive/archived wizard forums.
Random guides, nostalgia and fun stuff to look at
Sites that will make you weep with nostalgia.
EQ Stats, Heroics, Mods & Skills FAQ
Boss respawn timers - Many still correct.
EQ Atlas - The legendary hand-made maps of all zones up to PoP. Many of us veteran players had a binder of these maps printed, before the in-game map system was introduced.
More maps
Guide to Veteran Rewards
Drexxell's Plane of Sky Guide - The ultimate resource for one of the most complex zones in EverQuest, or any MMORPG for that matter.
Other Drexxell guides and maps
Zen Archer - Mainly famous for its "Quillmane Spoiler" section.
Guide to the EQ map system
Complete zone connection map of the world
Zam patch history - Try reading some of the ancient early patch notes for laughs.
EQLinks - Big link collection
Unsung Heroes - Various ancient quest guides, mainly for monks.
Food and drink durations explained
Old unsolved quests - Discussion forum about unsolves and later solved quests in Eq. Ancient.
Plane of Fear guide
Irontaail's Plane of Mischief guide
Runengetums guides - Various guides
Secrets of Ssraeshza Temple - Guide to the Luclin raid zone
Tinkerbear's EQ page - Ancient, outdated EQ info about spells and skills
Woodash's EverQuest gallery - Huge screenshot gallery of nostalgia. NOTE: If you're using Firefox, images will most likely not show up, as the URLs to them have some forward slashes in them instead of backslashes. View it in Chrome or IE instead.
The Bow and Arrow - Primarily a ranger resource, somewhat updated
Pak'Cafan - Various updated news and guides
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