(N)EverQuest Scrolls

I now have 200 AAs. Everything from general/archetype/class that is desirable I have already purchased, and I have 3 AAs stored. My maximum rate of earning AAs at 59 was 1.5 AAs per lesson in the Hole, at the destroyed constructs/gargoyles camp and the spirits of the ruins camp below it. If I timed it poorly, or if there was anyone else even close to the camp, I’d end up with about 1.4 AAs; if I got it just right, I once managed to take 1.6 AAs.

The “hot zone” exp boost for the Hole lasted several days into the new hot zones. On the first night of the patch I tested out Acrylia Caverns, and everything in Outer was still light blue; the exp rate seemed as if it would match the Hole, although I still haven’t measured it precisely. The Heart of the Sky augment dropped several times, as did the pieces for the James the Watchmaker cloak quest. There were several people, all much higher farming the area, so it wasn’t possible to get a clear determination. I came back the next night grouped with my wife’s mage (62, < 50 AAs), and the level range of players was more appropriate; plus I discovered that all of the mobs in Outer were green to her. My epic can hold aggro off my wife's WoX, although if I hold back for a relatively short time WoX will hold aggro. The only other options at 59 would be Dragon Necropolis, which is a very long hike considering that I need to be shrouded to keep pet toys; Dranik's Scar is too low level for decent exp, and has annoying wanderers. Of the non-hot zones, Howling Stones is a possible, but has a scattering of greens, and I would imagine the the North wing is too low for decent exp, which I would need to traverse every time to get to the next wing. The plan now is to grind to the full 30 AAs stored, then level to 61. There are no new AAs at 60, but I will continue to pause each level from 61 to 65 to grind a full set of the better PoP AAs, as detailed in previous posts. I think that I will be using epic pet on the lowest available light blues until low level aggro starts to become a problem, then switch to Ward of Xegony. I will definitely switch pets at 66. I might consider grinding through 65 to get to 66 and the new pet (Child of Wind), before getting the pet damage AAs at 65; I am undecided as yet.

In line with my recent post about beastlord gear, here’s what I can see to gear up a level 60 mage.

Goru’kar Mesa quests (Earth Melded)
hot zone augments
TSS/Crescent Reach quest augs
Watchmaker James quests – head, back, hands
Lavastorm quests – Sooty Miner’s Cloak, Lucky Miner’s Gorget and Glowing Magma Ring, Intricate Tool Belt
DoN armor/augs

Drowned Man’s Hair
Swirling Silk Bracer
Ethereal Silversilk Wristwraps
Necklace of the Arch Scrykin
Shimmering Band
Mantle of the Spellcaller
Chipped Ring of Bloodcalling
Shield of the Silver Serpent
Totem of Fear
Serpent Seeker’s Charm of Lore/Wanderlust Guild Loadstone

Mageblade/Orb of Mastery
ear?? Earring of the Solstice
Hollowed Bone Plated Mask/Elemental Facemak
Muramite Silk Turban of Contention

From a thread on the Veteran’s Forum on EQLive, something dear to my heart. The premise is a naked level 65 beastlord, with no cash.

Goru’kar Mesa Scout Madu quest armor
hot zone augments
Energeiac armor
Don Cultural armor (eg, Vah Anima, plus augs)
Bone Fist Sheath (H2H 20/23 50 HP) 90 crystals (ebon/radiant)
Bone-Studded Loop
Mineral Encrusted Hood
Glittering Cloak of the Ruins (PoR quest reward, also Bazaar)
Direwrought Leather Sleeves
Drachnid Fingerbone Necklace
Sleeves of Constriction
Gorewood Staff
Mantle of the Spellcaller

Taken from EQLive Newbie forum, post by Crystilla:

It will depend how strongly you like questing for items, versus camping a spot for items versus factioning. 

DoDH as you recall had almost all of their missions with guaranteed cursor drops when you won it, plus many also had the extra bonus chest back at the entrance or on the main boss you had to kill to finish the mission. 

PoR was a mini expansion (as the spring ones are) and moved away from that guaranteed cursor loot but did keep the chests at the end:

• there's not as many instanced missions, but there is a variety of zones for the 60+ range that vary in degrees of difficulty (packed mobs requiring splitting/mezzing of dark blues up to mobs that did aoe's requiring group healing as a standard heal tactic to yellow/red mobs again requiring splitting/offtanking/mezzing).  Arcstone – Relic – Devastation – Sverg.
• It did continue the trend toward providing some items that upgraded non-raiders very much like the Spirit cloak mentioned above. 
• The Freeport Arena Charm is part of this expansion.  You can get an instance of the Freeport arena and as your group battles waves and wins, your charm become stronger.  150/150 I believe it went to when you won all 42 events.  You could stop and pause between event waves for as long as needed. 
• There's also a quest which, if you had good PoGrowth faction, with no killing and about 15 minutes of running around you get a very nice item.  ( Different slot for different classes; one was a back item which was negated already with the Spirit cloak). 
• PoR also gave more augments as rewards and drops for missions, which helped to offset and improve upon augments purchased from DoN for example.
• With few instances, there were a lot of named camps where you could get specific visible armor slots to drop with pretty valuable clickies (and given what DoN purchasable armor was at and the rare visible slots from DoDH missions), the molds covered gear around 220 hp/mana.
• Spells were earned by doing a series of missions (for some classes they got one after completing the 3 Takish/North Ro missions; others got spells or 'auras' for finishing up a quest in devastation and even one other one was questable).  When you finished the quest series, you got a specific spell (so you knew in advance what you would get).
• For raiding, a lot of open zone mobs as well as a few instances (so a mix).  The end zone had 4 events only (not like the 9 events and up to 5? mini named in Demi-Plane from the DoDh expansion.

TSS took the game back to some of its roots (only better) in that:

• it increased the maximum level to 75
• created zones for level 1 – 75 to experience in and gear up in; small note here – in some cases the best gear was still in other expansions for the mid-game levels. 
• But tons (and I mean tons) of quests to do
• a new race ( Drakkin) to play.
• Open zones to exp in with some new mob/NPC models to enjoy.
• Lots of pretty good lore about the humans 'kissed' by dragons.
• Gear (single class only) drops from random trash that reached 285 hp/mana while visible armor molds for the higher end dropped from campable groupable named (tier 1 armor) which reached around 240 hp/mana.
• For raids, lot of factioning (which has still been made easier but is still quite intensive timewise), then you raid in instances.  Though there are some open zone targets which also mid-tier guilds can go after.
• Spells in this expansion were also completely redesigned.  Rank 1 spells for almost every spell are available off vendors and you can purchase it instantly.  Rank 2 are slightly stronger versions of the same spell and are drops off exp camps in the open zones.  Rank 3 are again slightly stronger and are only available off raid events.  The rank system has a specific turn in order which you can find on your class boards.  It works like OOW does (where it always seems the good spells are at the back).  Note – not all spells have a rank 1 version and not all spells have a rank 3 version.

TBS is another mini (Spring) expansion and takes an entirely different turn. 

• The Buried Sea deals with the fallout and battles with Seru, Katta, etc.  and while I have no idea how pirates got into the mix, there are some really nice character models (including sphinx's and other goodies).
• A number of open zones (and instanced versions of many of them) though warning, there is horrid lag in some of the zones.
• Again, lots of nice quests including a quest for an aug with 135/135 hp/mana (better aug than Anguish raid ones) which has all the tasks as solo missions that you can do alone or with some others as it's guaranteed rewards you get per person at the end of the solo tasks.
• Factioning is huge here as you are unable to buy spells/gear/weapons from the vendors without having done some missions to 'earn their trust'.
• Currency is new – there are dubloons (pirate) currency and Orux (Katta) currency as well as Phosphites (raid currency).  All spells, gear and weapons (that are on vendors) require the appropriate currency and faction.
• Spells again follow a rank system with the 1st tier purchased from the Pirates series of missions and the rank 2 spells purchased from the Katta series of missions and rank 3 from raids.  These are separate tiers with their own set of gear so that folks of varying levels can work up to the gear level they want. 
• Gear can drop off named mobs in open zones as well as is purchased through the vendors (once appropriate faction and currency are reached).  This 'earn currency' for vendor gear is similar to LDoN and DoN though like DoN the currency is tradable.  The highest group gear nets out around 280 or so.

Here's a list of quests I have polled together on my guild boards to enjoy.

TBS:
1)  Katta Portal Guide
2)  Samanna's Progression Guide
3)  Solteris Access Guide
 – #0 (prestep):  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4094 (A City in Peril Overview)
 – #1:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4051 (Knowledge for Power/Hide & Seek)
 – #1a:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4106
 – #2:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4052 (Locating the Statue)
 – #2a:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4107
 – #2b:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4108
 – #3:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4053 (Snakes Hiding Something)
 – #4:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4054 (Counter Attack)
 – #5:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4102 (Confront Emperor Zaarisz)
 – #5a:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4109
 – #6:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4103 (Where there's a Will)
 – #7:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4104 (Slay the Serpent).  Locs for these are:
700, 410,240
730,180,240

-390, 140,410
-320, -20, 410

170, -420, 590
250, -550, 640
 – #8:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4105 (Stop the Ritual)
 – #8a:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4110

3)  Pottery Quests (start of):
 – http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4114 (gives you Dusty Pottery Piece or Dusty Pottery Splinter)
 – http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4115 (gives you Dusty Pottery Piece, Dusty Pottery Splinter, Smooth Urn Handle)
 – http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4119 (gives you ??)
 – Library Heist gives you Cracked Urn Handle
 – http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4097 (gives Dusty Pottery Chip)

4)  Sphinx Naming missions:
  – #1:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4100
 – #2:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4111
 – #3:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4112
 – FINAL mission – http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4142 (gets Spectre illusion click)

5)  Flora missions:
 – #1:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4098
 – #2:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4099
 – #3:  http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4056

6)  Final item of the "pottery" quest = http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=67086 (soon to be 5 CHARGE before recharging)
7)  Final item of the "bones" quest (GOOD AUG) = http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=67072  and here is another link with everything outlined including locs and hints http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~leduncan/skeletalhand.html
7)  10% slow for undead mob, 5 min reuse Clickie

TSS:
1)  Single swarm pet quest
2)  Start of clickie circle type items
3)  Sunderock Springs item/augment quest
4)  Upgrade to Slipgear gem-start of Wanderlust (stacks with Wanderlust if you have Tradeskill Artisian charm)
5)  Link to 2 different charm slots (one for tradeskillers, one for questors) on cleric boards
 – Ala's link for the "turn in" one:  Charm of Lore
 – Eqtraders's link to the tradeskill charm:  Artisian Charm
6)  Caster/Priest 6mana regen, +20% dodge clicky
7)  Start of some other TSS tasks on Samanna's message board
8 ) +700 hp clicky (does not stack with cleric hp buffs, but does stack with druid and shaman)
9)  Pacify drakkin clicky
10)  Start of quest for Steppes portal clicky
11) Mana Pres 6 50/50 augment, GM armor usable
12) Continuation of #11 – 1 charge sow potion
13) 30% to fire right click focus, lasts 15 min unmodified
14) 10 charge clicky with 5% added evasion
15) Series of quests with same NPC that warrant the following:
 – 100% weight reduction bag
 – Stat food (not sure on actual stats)
 – 1 charge potion with +50 to all resists
16)  Series of quests with same NPC that warrant the following:
 – 1 charge potion with 60% sow speed
 – 8 slot 100% weight reduction bag
 – Stat drink (not sure on actual stats)
17)  50 hp/mana/end +3Mana regen, +15attack – takes 15 minutes
18 ) One reward is 35ac augMission is currently unsolved
19) One reward is 20ac aug
20) Gobbie familiar with FR and DS
21)  Final Augment from the 3 "disc" series

PoR:
1)  Samamma's reference link to PoR
2)  Deathknell access
3)  Temple of blood access
4)  Freeport arena charm
5)  Black Orb of the Scrykin
6)  Tinkering quest
7)  Cloak of the Spirit hunter back evolving item
8 )  Spirit mark armor
9)  Augment quest
10)  Coldain augment, 3 part MM
11) Start of group missions to gain access to Corruption of Ro event