(N)EverQuest Scrolls

– Many keyed zones from the Ruins of Kunark, Scars of Velious, Shadows of Luclin, Planes of Power, Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Depths of Darkhollow, and Prophecy of Ro have had their key/flag requirements modified. All players that have obtained the key/flag will still be allowed entry into the zones, as will players that have met minimum level requirements for the zones. The zones and minimum level requirements are as follows: (continue reading…)

I had some problems finding this from Safehouse, so I thought I’d make a list and put it here. This is a combination of good macros to have, and what to put on your hot button bar. (continue reading…)

Zone graphics have been changed for many zones. Along with these changes, new mobs and quests may have been added. This seems to be a part of ongoing revision of old zones, building in changes that seem partly to be derived from EQ2.

Revised Zones

This is from the perspective of someone leaving post-Luclin; there were earlier zone revisions and additions, like Split Paw, the Warrens, Stonebrunt Mountains and Befallen (which reverted back to it’s original form). New zones are only mentioned if they are available to everyone, regardless of expansion. In no particular order:

• Splitpaw. In original release it was upped from a teens level to 30-45 level.
• Runnyeye. Had a mobs and drops revamp before I started – which was early Luclin.
• Cazic-Thule. Just before the release of PoP, this was upgraded from a 20s/30s zone to a level cap (for the time) zone – 55-60. Mob changes only, but with new quests added.
• Jaggedpine Forest. This was added before the release of PoP as a 30-50 zone, available to everyone.
• The Hole. Was originally added, along with Stronebrunt and the Warrens, in the original era; but the Hole was revised (mobs and drops only) post-PoP.
• Grobb. was taken over by frogloks as a new home city for the new race, and trolls were moved into Neriak, at the time of the release of the Legacy of Ykesha. The frogloks renamed it to Gukta. Not long ago, sometime before the Serpent’s Spine release, trolls took back Grobb, and the frogloks were relocated to Rathe Mountains.
• Nurga and Droga. Were given new mobs, still goblins, but increased in level; Nurga is high 30s to low 50s, Droga high 40s to low 60s. This changed was made not long after PoP. Pathing was also changed.
• Chardok B. This is a completely new zone that was added not long after the Nurga/Droga upgrades, probably around the LoY era. It is on opposite faction to Chardok, and mostly undead. Level is 50-65.
• Sol C. Added at the same time as Chardok B and somewhat similar (apart from no undead), with entrances from Sol A/B.
• Plane of Hate. This was revised – new zone layout, but same mobs, same drops, in the general post-PoP era.
• The Mines of Gloomingdeep. This is the new tutorial zone. It was introduced somewhere around the release of Omens, and then expanded later, probably after the release of DoN. Now it is a level 1-10 zone.
• Mistmoore. This was “upgraded” to a 65+ zone (mobs only), but was reverted back to the old form after a short while; the change was around Omens, and change back was around Darkhollow.
• Split Paw. Now has new, elemental, mobs inside, 65+ (mobs only changed). The pathing has been slightly tuned. Changed same time as Mistmoore, Omens era.
• Veeshan’s Peak. No graphics changes, but converted to a hardcore, 65+ grouping zone. The only problem is that the key involves a raid in Skyfire that no one ever wants to do.
• Timorous Deep. This zone had some mob changes, but I have no idea exactly what, or exactly when! Possibly Omens. New, higher level pirates were added, and some new spirocs can also be found.
• The Bazaar. this was completely reworked, roughly around the release of Dragons of Norrath. The reasons behind this were largely outstanding problems with lag caused by line of sight issues. This was coincident with the introduction of a “buyer” system.
• Lavastorm. This has been considerably revised, with new mobs and the size increased. There are many new quests, very attractive for level 40+, and this zone is the gateway to the Broodlands. This was done as part of the Dragons of Norrath expansion.
• Firiona Vie. The outpost was taken over by dark elves, sometime before the release of Depths of Darkhollow. Everything else is the same.
• The Arena. A stone was added for this in the Plane of Knowledge, and graphics were revised. Not sure exactly when this was done, but somewhere between DoN and TSS.
• Nektulos Forest. This was briefly revised to a completely new layout, and was then changed again. Currently, it is more or less the same shape, with the same mobs and quests as of old, but with new graphics. This was done to add in the zone connection to Corathus Creep, as part of the Depths of Darkhollow expansion.
• Freeport. Is a new style zone, with new graphics and quests. This was done as part of the Prophecy of Ro expansion. The new zones are: West Freeport, East Freeport, and Freeport Sewers (a new, level 20ish zone, available to everyone). North Freeport is no more. The Academy of Sciences now connects to Arcstone.
• The Deserts of Ro. Again, this was done as part of Prophecy of Ro. The overall layout is the zone, but with Oasis merged into South Ro. Graphics have been changed, but most mobs are the same; a few were added (such as the Sand Giant Elites). There is a zone connection to a PoR zone, SW of the spectre isle.
• High Hold Pass. Now connects to Blightfire Moors in The Serpent’s Spine, and has new graphics, but same old mobs and quests.
• The Commonlands. No more East and West Commonlands; just one zone now. The mobs seem to be more or less the same, and the same quests, with a substantial graphics overhaul. This change was part of the December ’06 patch.

New Mobs

There are many other changes that may be less obvious to a returnee. A large number of extra, seemingly random, NPCs were added as part of the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion; these should all be indifferent, despite being “evil” when your character is “good” (talk about breaking immersion!); later expansions have added more, similar, NPCs. Some of these will give “tasks” when hailed. Tasks are mainly solo, and were added with Omens. These earlier tasks were criticised at the time for being incompatible with the levels of players they were given to, and highly class dependent. These tasks may or may not have been revised, I don’t know. Later expansions have added in new tasks, missions and quests; some are solo, some are group or raid. These later ones are considered to be better adjusted.

Some other extra mobs were added to existing zones; most of these are connected with the 1.5 and 2.0 epics, like the plains dragon in the Karanas (Bard), and so on.

Hot Zones

The last set of hot zones (Najena, Iceclad Ocean, Rathe Mountains, Frontier Mountains, Gulf of Gunthak, Velketor’s Labyrinth, Fungus Grove, Sebilis, and Cazic-Thule – this is wrong; it was the previous set, which included City of Mist), and the current set (Kurn’s, Unrest, Tower of Frozen Shadow, Lower Guk, the Hole, Sebilis, Chardok, Grieg’s End, Cazic-Thule and Split Paw), have had minor tuning done to them, that adds new rare/named mobs that drop new loot, which is more appropriate to the current era. This is something that will continue as each new set of hot zones is announced; the current plan is to change them every six months.

The zones of the Plane of Knowledge, the Bazaar and the Guild Lobby are available to everyone. The Guild Hall is still specific to DoN.

This is also a reminder for returning players, too.

Get started by downloading the ‘new’ patcher, and using that to download the rest of the game; this is faster than installing from CD, as you would have to patch over the CD install anyhow.

If you are completely uncertain about starting/restarting Everquest, get the “Escape to Norrath” free download from SOE; it lets you play any race/class up to level 10 in the Tutorial (only). Upgrading to Trilogy from here is free, you just need to pay the monthly subscription, which is the same no matter how many expansions you have. However, this isn’t the best route: buy Everquest Titanium for $20 or so; this included all expansions apart from Prophecy of Ro and The Serpent’s Spine, both of which are available as digital downloads. I’d strongly recommend Titanium plus TSS (although TSS alone is a very viable option for EQ virgins). If you don’t live in North America, you can get the key code for Titanum sent to you by onlinecdkey.

Before playing, download the all maps file from Mapfiend. You should use the Advanced button in the Everquest patcher to set it download all expansions, not only the ones that you bought.

If you haven’t installed a PC game recently, you WILL need to install Direct X 9.0c (or higher) from Microsoft.

When you enter the game, set up some macros – one for /assist, one for /corpse, and one for /loc; put these on your action bar, preferably instead of the spell icons (you can cast spells by alt-n, where n is the spells position in your spell bar). Also put any racial/class skills (hide, sneak, forage) on your bar.

Make a new character on a random server, and play the Tutorial to get a feel for things.

After a little while, you’ll probably want to set up a few more things; use the EQ button to explore the available windows; make hotkeys for combat and AA abilities. You can find suggestions for macros at most of the class sites. I’d set up at least one extra chat window for combat spam as well (filter->combat->ALL and filter->spells->ALL).

This is mainly aimed at newer players, but should work for experienced players who want to run through the early quests and tasks efficiently. Tasks usually give only trivial experience, but the rewards can be useful. If you are intending to powerlevel and twink extensively, then this isn’t for you.

Tutorial – Mines of Gloomingdeep

You start in the tutorial zone, Mines of Gloomingdeep. You have to run through the initial quest with Arias (Jail Break!) and the jailer to enter the main mines zone. That will put you at level 2. Take the Arias: Basic Training quest, and run through it to get the Kobold Skull charm. Take Arias: Rally with Rahtiz.

There are some remnants of the old tutorial zone still around without much purpose – these are the tradeskills and swimming quest NPCs, Frizznik and Pozik. Pozzik will give you a low AC mask, and his lost sword may also be a minor upgrade. Frizznik’s baking is superceded by skill-up quests in Crescent Reach, but gives some very minor stat food. One probable bug: Rahtan used to refer melee characters to another NPC to get their level 1 tomes, but this no longer happens – they will have to buy them in PoK/Crescent Reach.

Start with the rats and bats and spiders quests: Rahtiz: Clearing the Vermin Nests (stitched burlap leggings), Rebellion Reloaded (?); and Vyrinn: Spider Caves, Spider Tamer Gugan. You should be able to clear all of these in 20-40 minutes, and be level 4/5. This leaves just the Arachnidia quest to kill Queen Gloomfang, who is level 7. Stepping out to run the Plane of Knowledge quests at this point may be the best plan (see below). Back in the mines…

Move on to Guards Hobart and Maddoc. Hobart: Battle of Gloomingdeep; Maddoc: Kobold Leadership. Find Zajeer and Kaikachi while killing grunts and warriors. Zajeer: Scouting Gloomingdeep, Sabotage; Kaikachi: Goblin Treachery, Busted Locks. Use the scouting task to get to the fort to execute Sabotage; the supplies crate is to the left as you enter; you will have to kill or pass 2 or 3 captains to do this. Come back to Zajeer and kill goblin slaves on the way. The locksmith is nearby, up the passage to the north. If you still need slaves and slave wardens, go into the pit – Rockfynn is along one of the side passages, and is level 7 (or 6).

While you are in the kobold area, open the barrels – some will gives you free small bags.

Go back and kill Queen Gloomfang if you haven’t already. Reward is a few celestial healing potions.

After this activity the only three quests remaining should be: Hobart: Freedom’s Stand; and Maddoc: Pit Fiend. You can only get the latter after completing the Battle quest (may be level limited?), which also gives you some Gloom leggings. The final quest is Flutterwing’s Dilemma from the main camp.

At this point I would switch to Crescent Reach, although it is certainly possible to spend all your time in one or the other. The value of Gloomingdeep is the charm, plus an easy way to get some very basic armor. Switching to Crescent Reach at this point lets you skip some grinding in Gloomingdeep, and pick up some much better armor. The old newbie quest armors are also better than the gloom armors, although how easy they are to obtain varies considerably with class and location (hint: all berserker quests are excessively easy).

Plane of Knowledge

There are two ways to leave the mines: through the doorway/tunnel into your home city (Crescent Reach), or by saying to Arias: “ready to leave”. This takes you to the Plane of Knowledge. I would recommend the latter for some quick quest experience; take Arias’s advice, and go to find Vivian the True, at the entrance to the Library. Her several small quests give significant exp at low levels. To get to Crescent Reach, go back into the tutorial from your character select screen.

Crescent Reach

In Crescent Reach, pick up Tinnvin: Welcome to Crescent Reach; from Dakkan: Ways of Nature, Snake Sacs, Diseased Spiders. These are only worth taking if you will gain experience from the kills, which means around level 5 or lower. Fathus: Getting To Know You, which sends you running around. Only take one of the council member quests, unless you need faction (or the 1pp per quest reward): Prove Your Worth. Drakkin’s need take the quest for their dragon only; it may be worth other races doing all of the council quests to improve faction, but I have seen no evidence that this will be required (so far). Heshyrr: Heshyrr’s Wisdom. The runes for this are in the far SW of the dragon grove, and on the stones, just NE of the entrance/exit.

Back in the city: Champion Utenka: Ways of Combat; Guard Captain Minka: Love in the Air (reward necklace); Disgruntled Boawb (belt); Reakash: Reakash’s Revenge (mask). These are all run around quests (apart from the previously mentioned killing quests from Dakkan).

Now take Baker Shivra: Slightly Less Than Half of a Baker’s Dozen; Jinkin: Cap of Colour. These are for the mushroom cave (the first cave). Next is Jinkin: Here, Kitty, Kitty! and Baker Shivra: Party Preparation. Both of these are for the puma caves; of course, you should take all four at once. Jinkin’s rewards are potions, Shivra’s stat food. The highest level quest from this range is: Jinkin: Thrills and Quills; the reward is a bracer.

There is one easy killing quest remaining: Vunder the Dark: A Dark Heart. Reward is a 1HB. Vunder is marked as a level 10+ quest giver.

Total time to this point for me was 5 hrs 30 mins. The next Crescent Reach quests are significantly higher level (all mobs are yellow to red). This is a good time to go back to Gloomingdeep and finish the remaining three quests. Overlord Grikan is probably the easiest of the three, and should be level 10. Slave Master Ruga is only level 9, but he spawns two guards when you attack him; if you are high enough level (10 or 11), and pull him to the side of his room, then they shouldn’t aggro on you. The final mob is Krenshin, the level 12 pit fiend. You will get a Gloom tunic as a reward for Grikan.

One tip: stay bound in Gloomingdeep for as long as you can. You can gate into Gloomingdeep (if you are a caster), or use the Tutorial button on the login screen. From there you can use the tunnel exit to reach the Dragon’s Grove in Crescent Reach, or say to Arias: “ready to leave” to enter Plane of Knowledge. this is significant, because the PoK book is a long run through a slightly higher zone away from Crescent Reach.

The next quests are all from Skinner Bezath: No Skin Off Your Back, What a Croc, Rings and Things. Alligators and bears are level 11 and up. Gnolls are higher. If you have some skinspike potions, this may be feasible, but otherwise you’ll need to grind. You can pick either the fort or jail areas in Gloomingdeep, or the puma cave in Crescent Reach.

Once you are level 10, some more quests become active in PoK; check with Vivian the True once more. She will send you to an armor quest NPC (one good, one evil), who I think will refuse to speak to people with a home in Crescent Reach. She also gives a third, neutral quest giver: Castlen Drewe: Haunted Butcherblock, this requires level 11, and the reward is a Ghostly Mantle. Castlen has several quests to give, one per level up to 15/16, and a last one at 19. The armor NPCs give out pieces of the newbie quest armor, and if you have been levelling in Crescent Reach, this isn’t likely to be an upgrade. Castlen’s quest fill out most of the non-visible slots, and are high quality.

While in this level range and passing through PoK, get the Fine Antique Ring. Find Curator Merri in one of the buildings on the good side, and get her Collecting Box (just talk to her). Then you need to combine four items in it. A cockatrice beak, a high quality cougarskin, a tiny rockhopper eye, and an undead froglok eye. You will need to buy the skin in the Bazaar (unless you are already 30ish!), so hold off on this quest until you can afford one; the alternative is a merchant diving trip to the gnomes in Iceclad to see if anyone has sold one to them. The other items can also be bought there; this will be cheaper for the beak than trying to hunt one, or buying one from a vendor. The tongue can be found from frogloks in Qeynos Catacombs near Cubert (fine if you aren’t kill on sight there or can invis), and the eye from vendors in Shar Vahl, or from rockhoppers in the pit under the city. Tongues can also often be found on vendors in many other places. This ring has the mana preservation II focus.

Also consider the mask quest (the Forgotten Pools) for spell haste II. This involves talking to the guys sitting next to the pools on the good side of PoK, and giving in a sarnak blood (Bazaar/merchants again, or a trip to the newbie yard area of LOIO). You then need to make a run into Droga, so make sure that you have a good invis – the 10pp, instant cast cloudy potions may be an option for clerics and warriors.

So far my Drakkin necro is level 10, with around 5 or 6 hours played; for comparison, that is exactly the same as for the same levels in WoW.

I could have reached level 5 easily in either Gloomingdeep, or Crescent Reach. But you really need the tutorial zone (Gloomingdeep) to get the Kobold Skull Charm; and, as a Drakkin, at level 5 you can get your breath weapon from your dragon. To do this, you should take only the quest from your matching council member; the other quests give you 1pp, but nothing else. You then get a quest to kill a rare spawn (oh, memories!) in the Hollows – which is a decent levelling area for 5-10, the other side of the town in Crescent Reach. The spider you have to kill is about level 8 and is moderately tough for the level – meaning that, untwinked you may just be able to kill her solo at the same level.

As you reach level 10, you can kill your way around the mines easily, only needing to be particularly careful for the various bosses (Ruga and his guards, etc). At that level, the higher areas in the Hollows are still too high except in a group, and the top floor of the city is a reasonable levelling area. The boss there, Charbones, drops his skull for the second breath quest.

As a necro, my choice of the black dragon wasn’t the best (his breath is disease based; fire or magic would have been better; disease works better for a shaman or beastlord).

One thing is puzzling me – I heard that there was a potion belt, to make using potioons less painful (they have to be in top level slots to click otherwise); unless that was part of the Ro expansion, which I don’t have, I can’t find it.

The various change to out of combat regen, potions, and so on aren’t all that big: unless your entire world has been Everquest, of course. You still may need to sit for a few minutes to regain full mana and hit points, even at level 10; it is just a few less minutes. Easy availability of damage shield and regen potions for newbies makes powerlevelling available to everyone, and on every server, not just where you have higher characters. That does have some compensating advantages and levels the playing field some.

I haven’t played EQ in a couple of years (yes, since World of Warcraft was released), and I wanted to try it once again, being still quite attached to some of my characters. A lot of things have changed,and a lot of old resources have either vanished, or remained static, and thus become less relevant. I am making these notes on the low end game in case they may help others in a similar situation.

To start off, I bought an Everquest Titanium CD key from a third party (one hour delivery, very good service), then chose the digital download of The Serpent’s Spine from the Station store; these both come with 30 days play time, so I didn’t need to reactivate my account at all, just use the play time in the box. I chose to start a new Drakkan character, and follow the standard lowbie path through the tutorial (the Mines of Gloomingdeep), and the new newbie zones in Crescent Reach. So there I was, in the Mines of Gloomingdeep, after choosing a necromancer, facing Arias to follow through the tutorial quests, as so many times before. If someone following this hasn’t played Everquest at all before, or never played in Gloomingdeep, it is worth playing through – you get a reminder to the controls of EQ, some basic armor and weapon (easily beat by most things crafted or from the Bazaar), and a decent item to fit into your charm slot.

Since I last played EQ, the tutorial zone has been considerably expanded, and even Arias has been converted into the new task/quest interface. Arias implies that the ‘basic training’ tasks are optional – but they really aren’t; this sequence of tasks will give you your kobold skull charm, which is very desirable. Several of the other NPCs will offer you training tasks, but these don’t seem to be connected to experience, taks or any special rewards – although Poxtan with the swimming task will give you a kobold leather mask and you can use a second copy of his sword. In earlier versions of the tutorial, these were all part of a long chained task series.

There may be special named mobs in various rooms – Rufus, in the rats and bats room, for example. These may (or may not) have special drops. There are also various rare drops of special stat armour (like Gloomiron Bracers).

Tip: you can smash open the container (barrels, vermin nests, cocoons) – but the /open command is a lot easier and quicker.

For the tasks, start with the vermin task, then graduate to spiders and coccoon silk. Incidentally, it’s the coccoon silk task that gets you the stitched burlap shirt; all the rest of the stitched burlap set come as rewards for the spider silk hand in.

Remember to collect all the gloomingdeep silk for armor, and one each of a chunk of bronze and a chunk of iron (for Absor to give you weapon upgrades).

Once you choose to leave the tutorial, you will be given directions to the initial task givers in Crescent Reach; you should also hand in your guild note to your guildmaster (this is easy to forget, especially if you put it in your bank, like I did). I would suggest leaving the tutorial, at least temporarily, around level 5, so that you can benefit from the rewards from the 1-5 and 5-10 tasks in both the tutorial and Crescent Reach.

The tasks in Crescent Reach involves a lot of running around looking for people – I suggest using Allakhazam to help track them down, the quests by zone list is very useful for this. At the moment, I am working through all the quests I can find; so far I have started none of them that require killing, although the experience I have received has amounted to next to nothing.

Yes, the title is a deliberate parody of the money making guides sold from web sites for EQ, and the continual posts on EQ forums from ignorant newbies wanting to find that hidden way to wealth, riches and rapid level advancement. The real truth is that no such store of secrets exists, and if a system did exist that was easy, SoE would remove it faster than they nerf bards.

Having said that, there are quite a few ways that will earn you a good amount of cash – given a large investment of work on your part. Some of these may appear easier than others, but they just take more time.

First of all, here are a few that won’t work – guaranteed. Making a tradeskill item and selling it back to vendors; SoE have said many times that they don’t want this to be an option. Buying items in one place and selling in another at a profit. So if you see tips about pickled gator or shark meat, ignore them – they don’t work.

However, you can minimise the amount lost when selling, and this is a good trick to practice. You get the best prices when selling to vendors when you have a charisma of 105/109 or better, and your faction is indifferent. Apart from a rare few vendors who just plain give bad prices, you won’t get any better with 200 charisma and ally faction. So invest in some charisma gear for selling – 2 opal encrusted steins will boost cha by 50, and if you need more, there are other items you can get. (Kobold jesters crown, loam encrusted gear, some player made jewelry – cat’s eye) Also remember to compare prices when there is a choice of vendors, in some zones (Plane of Knowledge) there is no difference at all, and in others (Shar Vahl in particular), there can be a large difference between vendors. You should also be aware that as a vendor buys a lot of any item, it will gradually start to offer lower prices. At early levels, it is often extremely profitable to do newbie quests to boost your faction, then sell to the merchants in your guild.

First, level to 65…
There’s a saying that in EQ, level > all. So the options available to a level 10 character are extremely limited, and make a lot less money than those available to a 65 character, who may well already know all the money making tricks.

It is generally true that you are better off killing lots of mobs that drop a good average amount of money, than one or two extremely rare mobs that drop a fortune. It may seem like you are getting a better deal with the uber loot, but you really aren’t; calculate the amount of money earned per time invested, and remember to include not just your killing time, but the time getting to the kill spot, time taken camping placeholders, and most important of all, the time required to sell the item for a good price.

For a level one player, you can easily make 20pp per hour or better. In Freeport and Qeynos newbie areas (also in Misty Thicket and Steamfont, although the mobs there are slightly higher), rats and snakes drop a number of items that sell for several gold each, and these items are stackable. Rats also drop the plague rat tail in most newbie zones – this sells for roughly 1pp 6 gold. Get to know which common drops off of common mobs are worth the most. N Qeynos is my favorite zone for this approach.

At higher levels, your options open up. One of these possibilities is (green) goblin camps in Butcherblock. The items that drop there sell for 4.5pp in some cases. In Butcherblock (and Toxxulia Forest), pristine skunk claws are relatively common, and sell for the same price, as do some other drops from Wandering Greenbloods.

Willowisps are around level 12 and need magic weapons to hit – but drop uncommonly (about 1 in 10) greater lightstones. These can be traded via a quest with the gypsies in North Karana (or the dark elf vendors in South Ro) for an item worth approximately 8pp. Wisps are found in North Karana, West Commons, Qeynos Hills and in Eruds Crossing. Wisps in Jaggedpine Forest always drop a GLS, but they are much higher level.

For 20 – 40 players, look for mobs that drop fine steel weapons, or bronze or ringmail armor; these sell for an average of about 5pp to vendors (3pp for the dagger). In general goblins are good for this, in High Keep basement, Butcherblock crazed goblins, Solusek’s Eye; and the gnolls in South Karana outside (and inside) Splitpaw. Bandits in Paludal also qualify, but are usually overcamped. I’d expect to see 100 – 250pp per hour from these; not great compared to aqua goblins, but these will give a 20 – 30 player experience as well. At higher levels there are always good money making experience camps – geonids in Crystal Caverns for 35 – 45 will make 500pp/hr, scarabs in Sebilis for 45 – 55 can make 1000pp/hr, and so on.

At higher levels, guards can be good – look for 200 – 500pp per hour from these, depending on which set of guards you are willing to trash faction with. Guards in Paineel, Oggok, Misty Thicket and High Keep are good for 30-40/45, whereas Neriak, Felwithe, and Katta work for the 50+ player. These all give faction hits, however. The mysterious Kaladim Citizens in Butcherblock also come into the 35+ group. In the same category would have to go the rangers at the druid rings in West Commons; for mid 30s, around 800 – 1k pp per level is possible.

Buy Low, Sell High
All of the above involves killing, looting, and selling to vendors. Selling to players is a different game, and requires more patience to wait to see if your items will sell. In general, it is better to hold out for a good price, even at the risk of being seen as expensive – after all, who cares? To follow this, you should have a permanent internet connection, and either be willing to sit in Bazaar afk 24/7, or use a second account to create a mule character who will.

In the purest form, get together some cash, about 2k pp is ideal, and sit in the bazaar, checking ooc and auction tells as well as general bazaar prices, and get to learn the typical selling prices for popular high value items on your server. Haste items are great, as are regen and mid range weapons – silver chitin hand wraps, flowing black silk sash, argent defender, ceremonial iksar breast plate, centi weapons, Lamentation, etc. Buy low, sell high. Never ever price something less than your competition in the bazaar in the hopes that it will sell quickly – if that is what you want, price it the same as the lowest. Someone else can always undercut you, just as you can them – and there is no point at which this has to stop. If you see an item with a limited supply priced too low, buy it and sell it for more – but never do this with tradeskill items, as the supply will be replenished.

Vendor Mining
You don’t need to sell only things that you have made or hunted for yourself, or bought from other players. A great source of items to sell is from NPC vendors. Very often in newbie areas players sell tradeskills supplies to vendors (I have found more HQ bear pelts this way than from hunting), and in popular transit zones like PoK and Shadowhaven some very nice items can be found on the vendors. In fact, one of the best zones for finding decent items is Bazaar itself!

Turn in Spells

Most spell classes have a mid 50s range of spells that can only be obtained by turning in a Kunark drop spell to an NPC in Firiona Vie. These turns can, I believe, be done by anyone of any class. Multiple copies of the least good of the turn in spells can be bought cheaply in the Bazaar (Spirit of Scale for druids, Yaulp IV for clerics, Defoliation for necromancers, etc) and the result resold in the bazaar for considerably more.

Tradeskills
can be great – but, if they are seen as being a way of getting rich quick, too much competition will ruin your market. I have seen Halas 10lb Meat Pie being bought in stacks of 20 for 20pp each, and the next day some impatient idiots selling them for 1pp (the cost of making them, ignoring the 45 mins plus required for the combines and the time to hunt mammoth meat, is closer to 2pp per pie, assuming they are trivial to make). Tradeskills are only truly profitable if you already have a high skill level, probably 200+, and a new recipe is introduced; this happened when the Cabbage patch (Solstice earring) recipes came out, although in that case it took a long time for prices to settle down. Tradeskill item prices will tend to drop to below the cost of making, as people skilling up are prepared to lose money in order to skill up faster, and as second hand items come back into the market.

One system that is supposed to work is to make fish rolls, and buy Fuzzlecutter Formula 5000 from the gnome outside W Freeport (Ping Fuzzlecutter). These individually cost a few gold, and should sell well in the bazaar for 1pp each.

The other way to make money from tradeskills is to be a supplier, not a consumer. What I mean by that is you provide tradeskill components that are timeconsuming or inconvenient for a higher level person who needs to master a tradeskill for quests to pursue. This can be done profitably by level 10 characters; collect pelts (cat, wolf, rockhopper or bear, all except for ruined), and sell for 2pp – 20pp each. High quality bear skins should sell for 20pp to make tailored backpacks (the same applies for high quality rockhopper hides), all the rest 2 – 10pp, depending on market forces. Harvest spider and spiderling silks and sell for 1 – 5pp each; or convert them into leather padding and silk swatch, and sell for a lot more. Other items used for tradeskills that are rarer can be dealt with in the same way – perfect owlbear pelts (not really a tradeskill item), superb and flawless rockhopper hides, crystalline spider silk, and so on. A very good example of this is swirling shadows, which drop from lesser shades (level 5 and below) in Shadeweavers Thicket, and sell for 50pp each on most servers; these can be found on the hill side SW of the Paludal tunnel entrance.

Spiders are common in East/West Commons, East Karana, and in Upper Guk. Spiderlings are common in Innothule Swamp and the Feerrott. Pelts are commonly found in West, North and East Karana (cats), West Commons (bears), Shadeweavers Thicket and Dawnshroud Peaks(rockhoppers), and Marus Seru (greyhoppers). You will also find shade and shadeling silk in Shadeweavers Thicket. Generally speaking, if you are a new character sub level 10, your newbie area will offer a good mix of pelt and silk drops – Qeynos Hills, Nektulos Forest, Feerrott, Innothule Swamp and Shadeweavers Ticket are all good for this; but Steamfont Mountains, Butcherblock Mountains and Greater Faydark aren’t.

Ores for smithing can be excellent Bazaar fodder; these are required for the Coldain prayer shawls quests and general skill ups. Both velium and acrylia ores work well for this. Velium drops are common from orcs in Crystal Caverns, 20s/30s mobs, as well as the rather higher spiders and kobolds in Velketor’s Labyrinth; and acrylia drops from tribals and grimlings in Dawnshroud Peaks, Maidens Eye, Grimling Forest and Tenebrous Mountains. These can be hunted for exp, depending on zone, from about 30 to 45, with 100 – 500pp per yellow of experience.

Supplying intermediate products for tradeskills is another good policy. Tradeskillers will pay a premium for common intermediate combines that only require a low trade skill level. I have already suggested silk swatches and leather padding above; others that come to mind include celestial essence, heady kiola, LoY dyes, and others that may occur to you if you search the trade skill recipe pages at eqtraders.

Why not just trade cash?
Another way of making money is to become a banker. First, get yourself a lot of platinum, and several summoned bags (100% weight reducing). Then go to a zone like Everfrost or Rathe Mountains, and offer to give people platinum in exchange for copper and silver, with a 10 – 15% markup. This assumes that these are popular camps for money making, of course. Or go to places where fine steel drops, like South Karana and Soluseks Eye, and vendors are far away, and offer to buy all fine steel for 3pp each.

Uber L007z
The last money making technique is the closest you’ll find to the uber loot guides. Find an item you want, and camp for it. Let’s take an example – the ancient croc in Upper Guk can be killed in your 30s, and drops gatorscale sleeves and leggings, probably worth 200 – 600pp on most servers. The placeholder spawns every 20 minutes, and I’d guess you get the ancient every couple of hours. Forget it. 200pp an hour on average is decent, but not great – unless you are getting very good exp from the camp. Much the same applies to absolutely any possible drop you can think of. The best you can realistically do is to attempt to string together several named mobs with special drops, close together, in an empty zone. In fact, write up a zone guide; good candidates for this are Solusek’s Eye (a 45 warrior and cleric could do king, jailer, barman and drunkard at will), Permafrost, Hollowshade, Crystal Caverns and the Warrens. Apart from a few, special cases; these are the named cycles in a few zones – Frontier Mountains, Trakanon’s Teeth and Skyfire Mountains (I think). For these cycles, every time you kill a mob on one of these cycles, the next in the sequence spawns; these mobs have specific loot that always drops. Provided you can track them down, and know what the cycle consists of, this is a good way of making money.

Tips from an experienced player on what anyone, even a person just picking up the game, should do on their first day. I still do this on all my new characters.

Map the keyboard

First, set up your keyboard controls. This only needs to be done the first time on any new computer, and carries over to all new characters (mostly). Bring up the Options panel, and choose the Keyboard tab. Different people will have different preferences, but I like to remap auto attack from A or Q to the Ins key on the numeric keypad. I also change the actions for F7 and F8 from target nearest player/NPC to cycle through nearest.

Make sure that autoduck is disabled; check to see if you want autostand or not.

Hot buttons

Next, hot keys. I create socials for /corpse and /assist. If my characters has the ability to forage or track, I create a social for these, too; if both, then both commands go in the same social. Use /doability n for these skills, then you can put them in your social. This goes on hot button 9, for me, and I associate it with presses of Numpad 8 (the forward key); other people prefer a turn key.

Pet users get another social: /pet hold, /pet back off, /pet attack. The hold part is for when you get pet discipline as an AA skill. I use this to both call my pet back (by first targeting myself), and to ask it to switch targets, by targeting the new target I want it to switch to.

Any special class abilities, like lay on hands or harm touch also go on hot buttons; for melee characters, so does taunt and slam/bash (use slam, if you have it, as the key will activate both abilities, not just the should slam).

My assist macro goes in slot 1, taunt in 2, pet attack or bash in 3. I will put a fast cast spell in slot 4 – healers get their heal there, paladins get yaulp, beastlords fleeting fury, etc. My ‘get out of jail free’ ability goes in slot 0 – DA, FD, HT, LoH, evac, etc. Slot 8 gets bind wound; slot 6 is reserved for a clicky – jboots, CoS, etc. That leaves slots 5 and 7! I hope you won’t put some convoluted macros in there; spam announcing your intentions gets old fast.

Prepare offline

You may think this is enough set up, but there’s more. Before even entering the game for the first time, look up spell lists for the first few levels – I prefer Allakhazam for this, as the lists contain sufficient information and you can reach full spell details and vendor information quickly. Also, find out full shopping lists for any newbie armor quest, and one other quest. Most newbie zones have a ‘bone chip’ quest; one that returns lots of experience for handing in easily obtainable, droppable items; in Field of Bone, Felwithe and Kaladim it is bone chips; Kaladim also supports crushbone belts and shoulder pads.

The Tutorial

When you are ready to start the game, enter the Tutorial. Stay there to level 4 at least. You want to collect the charm as soon as possible, and make use of Rytan for buffs, as well as the Vigor potions from the mushroom hand ins. Aim to collect a full suit of stitched burlap armor from handing in silks, an iron weapon from killing the slavemaster, and your starter spell/ability. If you choose to start groups, you can also have several leadership points accumulated. You can level to six easily in the Tutorial zone. In a way, it doesn’t matter if this is relatively slow (which it won’t be), as one of your objectives should be to keep the main skills (defense, offense, one weapon skill, and a casting skill – in that order) up for your level.

Newbie armor quests

When it is time to leave, you will appear in front of your guild master in your home city. Follow the standard conversation, hand in your note (for faction), and hail the guild master to be told where the newbie armor quest starts. Why do the newbie armor quests? Because they are cheap, and good value, provided you know when to move on. The weapons are never worth the effort, but the rest of the items vary from ok to excellent, all items being at least decent gear with stats.

By this time, you should make sure that you have all your spells for your next or current level; 4 for int casters, 5 for priests. Now get some money. Plague rat tails are worth 1.6pp from the better merchants, and some zones have special rich mobs – kobolds in Steamfont, green goblins in Butcherblock, skunks in Butcherblock and Toxxulia, aviaks in Steamfont and Butcherblock. Once you are rich (20pp is easy, 100pp is feasible), save some away for your next spells, and buy any drops you need, that you haven’t already accumulated from kills, for your newbie armor.

A few pieces of newbie armor will need no drop items. Sometimes these are easy kills, and sometimes absurdly rare. If the mobs that drop them are no longer dark blue to you, skip them, forget the armor, and move on.

Twinks

What if you have existing characters, and want to make life ‘easier’ for your new character? Whatever you do, still do the tutorial; the reasons to do it apply to any type of character. Put into the shared bank slot: spell money (100-200pp is fine), 1 or 2 x platinum (or velium, but platinum are better value) fire wedding rings or shadel bandit rings; a good, no level restriction, fast weapon (centi short sword, shaded blade, shaded dagger, centi spear, centi warhammer); if a caster, kits to get the PoK ring and mask (sarnak blood, HQ cougar skin, undead froglok tongue, cockatrice beak, tiny rockhopper eye). Priority for all characters is HP first; for melees, then weapons and AC; for casters, focus items (which sort depends on the caster, but spell haste and mana preservation are good basics), then mana. Note that int/wis for casters isn’t on my list: it makes almost no difference to mana pool compared to +mana, and you will be using level restricted items later that will take them over cap on these stats anyway. Something similar applies to strength and stamina for melees, and their ability to deal damage while being powerlevelled isn’t exactly significant.

Lowest        -3000
scowls        -3000 to -750     (2750 point range)
threatening   -749 to -500       (250 point range)
dubious       -499 to -100       (400 point range)
apprehsive    -99 to -1          (100 point range)
indifferent    0 to 99           (100 point range)
amiably        100 to 499        (400 point range)
kindly         500 to 749        (250 point range)
warmly         750 to 1099       (250 point range)
ally           1100 and up       (assuming max = 1200,
                                  4200 point range)

Or possibly:

Below -801, scowls at you, ready to attack
-800 to -501, views you threateningly (300 range)
-500 to -101, scowls at you dubiously (400 range)
-100 to -1, is apprehensive (100 range)
0 to 99, is indifferent  (100 range)
100 to 499, is amiable  (400 range)
500 to 699, kindly considers you (200 range)
700 to 1099, views you warmly (400 range)
1100 and up, you are an ally

Enchanter spells modify factions for the enchanter:

• Alliance +100
• Benevolence +200
• Collaboration + 300

Positive faction hits are usually +1, negative ones -10. Faction quests (like those from Fenden Helter) may give 25 points.