Fashion, Baby - What To Wear

So, there's a lot of armor out there, and it can be tough to decide what to wear.  Our first order of business is breaking down the tiers of items. 

• Common: This is basically vendor trash.

• Handcrafted: Player-made items that are made with normal harvestables - similar stats to Treasured items.

• Treasured: Very common drops that come with average stats. 

• Mastercrafted: Player-made items that are made with the rare harvestables.

• Legendary:  These items are fairly rare and come with better stats than Treasured items.

• Fabled: These items are very rare and come with much better stats than Legendary items.

• Mythical:  Super ultra mega rare quested raid type items.

Wednesday Protip Roundup!

Like GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle:

• You know those relics, scrying stones, and sealed documents you come across in your adventures?  Don't vendor them!  You should sell them to the city merchant in your home city to get status points.  Your guild will get 10% of the status you receive for them, which is how your guild levels up.  Later on, you can buy some cool stuff with status points, so start building them up early.
• Speaking of status, you can get great big chunks of it from doing Heritage Quests.  You also get some darn nice items - and if you can't use them, you have the option to turn them into a house object.  Most of these quests require a group at various points, so recruit a few people to help you.  
• Player-made food and drink is way mo' betta than the crap you get from the vendor.  Some of the foods/drinks give you stats and can last for hours.  The broker will have all your food needs.  (It's more expensive, but it's worth it.)
• The 1_9 chat channel is a server-wide chat channel that you can use to ask questions and talk to your fellow players.  (Sometimes, however, it becomes infested with utter retardation and it is best to turn it off.)  Got a crafting question?  Join the Crafter channel - there tends to be less trolls there.  Got a newbie question?  Join the Newbie channel - lots of helpful players frequent this one.

I am a font of information, no?  I'll try to make this a regular weekly feature, since there's about a zillion little tips like this just floating around.

A Halfling's House in Halas

Dude, whoa.

I knew there was housing in the game but I hadn't paid it much attention.  I toured the house of Tamiana Nebyter on Antonia Bayle today and I was blown away by how much you can do with housing.  This is her greenhouse in her Halas Manor.

Most of this stuff came from the Moonlight Enchantments grottos that take place once per month.  Pretty amazing, huh?

Bonus Guild Experience This Weekend

Looking to level up your guild?  Sony has declared that this weekend will have a 50% bonus to all guild experience earned from 5pm PDT on the 22nd to 10am PDT on the 25th.

Mind you, they aren't doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts.  A while back, they 'normalized' guild experience to require less points per level, but quite a few guilds actually lost experience.  Sony did try to tell them that their loss was actually their gain, but oddly enough, no one bought that line.  So, here's their apology.  I, for one, will gladly run it in.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me

Making money in EQ2 at low levels is fairly easy if you invest the time but you have to know what to look for and what you should be selling.

Before we begin, go to the broker in your home city.  (Ask a guard where it is or search for it on your EQ2Maps.)  Buy the roomiest strong box you can afford, even if it’s expensive; you will make the money back ASAP.  Click on the Sell tab of the broker window and drop that box in the top.  Voila!  You now have a store on the broker.

Tradeskills–Breaking It Down

EQ2 has a very involved crafting system.  It is not like World of Warcraft where you queue up a million combines then go AFK for an hour.  The crafting in EQ2 is a little mini-game unto itself, and if you don’t pay attention to it, you can fail to make the item you want.

Others have all of the in-depth information on the how-tos, the whys and the wherefores.  What we’re after here are the basics: what are the classes and what do they make?  I’ve also listed which type of adventurer is complemented by the tradeskill class.

This is Halloween ("Mmmm, nom noms!")

Halloween events are not just for high level people! Even the level-challenged can get in on this great content.

Become a Nights of the Dead Devotee.

Lay to rest the ghosts of the Haunted House.

Trust a goblin only about as far as you can throw him.

These events will be going on through November 8th.

Class Confusion–Breaking It Down

There sure are a lot of classes in EQ2 – 24 to be exact.  Figuring out what they can do (and what they can’t) can be problematic.  Here is a breakdown of each class in the most basic, briefest way possible.

Starting Out Right

Welcome to EQ2!  This is a great game, and it has a lot of content to get through.  Sometimes, however, it can be tough to figure out where to go and what to do.  A lot of the information you’ll find, even in the Wikis or on Zam might be very much out of date.  There’s also a lot of information that the tutorial just doesn’t give you. 

So, I’m condensing some of the things that I learned after coming back from a long break recently.  This blog will have tips to help you not only get started, but also to build a foundation for long-term play. 

We’ll start out with the top three priorities for starting out right:

1. Get EQ2Maps.  This is the most important thing you can do as a new player.  This is an addon that has most points of interest – quest mobs, important NPCs, zonelines – delineated for you on your in-game map.  The data is community-maintained and it isn’t always 100% accurate, but it’s better than stumbling around in the dark.
2. Live in Neriak if you’re evil or Halas if you’re good.  There are other cities but they are a nightmare to get around in.  If you can find anything in Gorowyn, you’re a better man than I am.  Qeynos and Freeport both have far too many zonelines to be convenient.  Neriak and Halas have great layouts, everything is close at hand, and the housing is nice.  If you started out somewhere else, don't worry - you can always move to a new city.
3. Work on Alternate Advancement points.  At level ten, you are eligible to earn Alternate Advancement points.  You hit L to see them.  There’s also a slider at the top of the window.  You should slide that to around 50.  That means that 50% of your experience points go into earning AA.  AA points are what truly make your character powerful in this game.  It is far easier to earn AA at lower levels than at higher ones.  In order to build your character correctly, keep a steady flow of experience routed to your AA throughout your leveling.

No matter what class you choose to play, these are some solid tips for beginners.  Next up, we’ll talk about the classes and tradeskills and how they fit together.