Permafrost Server and why do you Box?

Hello all, I originally played eq1 with a warrior in an "uber guild". This took so much time out of my life that i eventually had to quit. Time went on and then i started to play eq2 as a necro so i could solo, i never wanted to group or join another "uber guild" because even though i like the social interaction i do not want to be tied down to guild responsibilities and i would like to have the flexibility to camp or leave when ever i wish.

this is why i have created my own guild (permafrost server) and 6 box the game. to me this is a lot of fun as i can play when ever the hell i like and i can explore all kinds of fun aspects of the game i couldn't do solo on my necro. If anyone boxes and takes the game the same way i do then post here or send me a PM. Perhaps combined boxed forces can eventually raise the guild lvl to a point where i can actually get a guild hall and still play the game my way... the boxed way! haha.

Welcome Victor - and I hear ya re ex-uber-guildy, only so many hours/days/months/years you can spend with a leading guild before life takes a higher priority

Re the guild level - just in-case you don't get a rush of new members and are unsure of how to boost it quickly - there are several ways to quickly boost your guild level
- hand in all the faction tokens you can - good to get you started
- kill named - some of the higher end names gives a nice guild boost
- do as many HQs as you can stand - doing them x6 should make the levels fly for a bit
- and my favourite, wait till your team is lvl 70, go to the RoK docks, /lock, grab all the faction writs and do about 20-30 complete laps (about 5ish writs a go) a night for a good month

The last strategy works best if all your team is evil as the evil writs require you to kill the common stuff hanging around the docks. Whereas the good writs require the less common mobs.

Continually doing say 5 writs x 6 team members x 30 laps quickly adds up to some serious guild levels

Good luck

Hey Noxxy, thanks for the welcome. I read a bunch of your posts before i signed on to this forum and your always on point.

what you wrote here:

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and my favourite, wait till your team is lvl 70, go to the RoK docks, /lock, grab all the faction writs and do about 20-30 complete laps (about 5ish writs a go) a night for a good month

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sounds like a great idea to me as my team is getting close to 70. To be honest i don't think anyone will send me a pm in regards to wanting to join or play for the same reasons i do but you never know. I see you have all rat characters... mine are all iksar for the same reason. they make me laugh.

I will warn you a bit before you get set to do the mass writs though - it is a 'tad' monotonous - BUT - IMHO, it is fast enough to do as the writ givers plus + the mobs are so close to each other

Things will slow down after the mid-50s but if you persist (and are ok mindlessly grinding) you will be rewarded with a high leveled guild which you can honestly say 'you created/leveled yourself'

Don't forget also - if you work out your 'shortest route', and you have an evac'r in the group, complete your writs, hit evac and you'll all respawn back at the docks for handing in - saves the run back (great if you have 2, i.e., a bard and rogue so alternate evacs for extra speed between cooldowns)

To give you an alternative - your prob aware that guilds can get tokens - like stun resists etc - each depends on the guild level - so check out the guild merchants found in the major cities - you might be happy with getting your guild to say 55 (quite fast) and stopping there which gives you the lowest tokens as opposed to going all the way (long time) and getting the best token available

While you are running round that area I would suggest grabbing the pages you see (honestly forgotten thier name - fluttering page?) as they are required for the 'little book' series (i.e., not sure which one but one of - little green, black or red - think it is red or black?). These collections are very good to complete for later on and are required for some quests -> thugga. They have longish respawn timers so just get a page a lap type of thing

LIZARDS! /slaps forehead

Answer to "Why do you box?"

I box for the same reasons as you. I used to do the high end raiding in EQ1 and earlier WoW (T2), but have gotten burnt out on raiding altogether. As such, I searched for a game to that would be fun without delving into the hardcore community, but, of course, there is no such thing.

Without the Hardcore community, you are left with PuGs and soloing. Soloing is not as fun as it used to be, and PuGs, even in WoW, are unbareable after grouping with the elite of EQ. Soloing only allows you to see a lesser portion of the game, and you miss out on some exciting encounters and achievements.

So, with these options what are you left with? Form your own group, controlled by you and go to town! Did that SK do an awesome job of tanking that instance? It was you! Did the Warlock in your group screw the pooch? That was you, too! Guess you have some room for improvement!

I think that leads to another reason to Multibox - Another challenge. Let's face it, any game with a set of rules, no matter how complex, can be mastered. We are all adults here. We can do our homework and our brainstorming and master a single class with ease these days. No new MMO is going to come out with a concept we can't master anytime soon. But, can you master playing multiple roles? Can you complete all the content that another group of individuals who have mastered their roles can complete? The answer right now is NO! Multiboxing has not been mastered on any level, except for, at one point, PvP was arguably mastered in WoW by Ellay when he was placed 1st until voluntarily restarting his team.

Summary - Multiboxing to keep the group content fun while avoiding the Hardcore Guilds. I control and am responsible for everything that happens to my group, therefore I don't need to rely on others for things I deem necessary (What this means is that if I feel that I need something from group content, I can provide this for myself. However, I will still group with people for the pure fun of it).

I always see replies to boxing post on other forums from people saying..."It's a social game, boxing should be against the rules!" And I always think to myself...........'really, you think you're being social behind that computer?' In a fantasy game world no less.


When I raided, I planned my day around the guild raid times. Even when we didn't raid, I did flaging quest, factioning, whatever was needed to be elegible for the next raid effort we do. I actually stopped doing stuff in real life in order to make raids. I felt like I was compelled to play. If our raid went beyond my sleep time, I stayed up and went to work tired and red eyed. I really can't do that.

I recently returned to Everquest and started my own guild wth only my box army in it. I like very much that I feel zero influance for my play time. I actually started going to the gym regularly again (that's what suffered the most when I was in a raiding guild lol). I log on when I want, I log off when I want and sometimes I go through weeks without playing at all and without thinking...'that will disqualify me from bidding atthe raid..' WTF!!?? What the fuck was I ever thinking there. It's all pixils, the fun I get out of it is the progression. Now I am just progressing at my own rate in my own way and although a guld full of people can do better and faster, it's just more obligations then I want to devote to a game. Kinda strange that considering I box 12, that I consider that many people whome don't box at all are more addicted to the game then I am?

I'm in the same boat as most of you all.

In my EQ1 days, I could spend hour or two getting groups in CT and another 5 hours grinding out level 30. Nowadays, with a 6 year old son and another on the way, my playtime is limited to 5-7am in the morning PST. Finding groups at that time just doesn't cut it!

The flexibility that 4 or 5 boxing allows me is incredible. I'm basically playing one of the largest single-player games out there and having a lot of fun. :D

I box because i'm a greedy, perfectionist bastard that cannot wait another frikin minute for someone to 'Take out the Trash' or 'goto the bathroom' for 15minutes. I box because I love the challenge of doing something that only a few other humans on this planet have the knowledge, skill and dedication to do. I box because i'm not uber and I'm tired of being reminded that i'm not uber. I box because i'm an anti-social maniac that has to have things done his way. I box because I can.

I'd join you on Permafrost, but my server (Oasis) already has something like ten 6-boxers (and i'm helping 2 more right now) and a plethora of 4-3-2 boxers. I already have two 'well done' lvl 80 teams and a lvl 31 guild. Furthermore, a few of us 6 boxers have already started 'attempting' the 2x dungeons with just 2 guys and 12 toons... and even hit up the trash mobs in a few x4 instances.

To get the guild to 31, I did pretty much every HQ I could find until lvl 50-ish, then ran dungeons and raids. I have 'maybe' run 50 writs, total, ever... A good instance run will get you a few thousand status points per toon, and if you're busting out 3-7 instance runs a night, the loot and status will be about the same as running writs all the time... except you'll have shards, masters and some decent equipment upgrades and not be As bored. YMMV

And don't be afraid to give raiding a shot once your whole team is in T1 armor w/ Epics and kunark jewlery. Talk to some open raid leaders and get at least 1 toon invited, then when they are trying to fill the last two spots, sweet talk the raid leader into letting you box 2 toons (total). Once a raid leader sees your skill, they should let you box more and more toons.

Better yet, put together an MT Raid Group yourself, and once they are in T2 shard armor w/ TSO Jewelry w/ Epics, start your own raids. Start off by clearing Shard of Fear (alone) so you get a good feel for the Raid Zone Mob Stacked pulling, then throw together a Pickup Raid in Shard of Hate. With a solid team in T2 shard armor and Epics, you can solo the x4 trash in Shard of Hate and pickup some nice drops.

Me and a 6-box buddy of mine can 'duo' SoHate and clear all the trash + first 2 named bosses in ~2 hrs. There's nothing better than splitting raid loot between two guys :eek:

Seems like everyone boxes for similar reasons.

damn it's nice to be doing some more interesting content without having to rely on the crazy ass system of guild loyalty, playing weird hours clued to the screen and telling people close to me they have to wait until i'm done. it's also nice to be taking on some mobs that used to kick my necros butt too.

yeah there are those people who try to knock boxing with all that talk about how it's anti-social and so on but to me whats anti social is sitting all day sacrificing real life for guild life.

i'm going to do those writs at 70 like noxxy is saying until it bores me and then i'll move on. in the mean time i did notice some status on completing the cazel's mesa instance and the klakanon inovation one. the cazel one alone bumped be up a couple of levels (3-4 haha).

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do those writs at 70

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- The new chronomancy [sp??] changes may save you from boredom victor. Was reading that lower level writs can be completed by higher level chars if they mentor down now via chronomancy (or whatever it's called). May be worth investigating as you could level for a bit, then come back and mentor down for a few writs, then go off and continue leveling if bored - may avoid the need to /lock at all now
- honestly haven't had the chance / need to do it myself so I can't check if it works

Vic/Noxxy: Yeah, you can mentor down to any level in increments of 5 (level 10, 15, 20...etc.). I haven't done it myself but that should allow you to finish previously-grey quests. I think it costs a small amount and must be done in a city. Effect can be cancelled at any time.

Asgradth: The guild I am in is incredible casual, so there were lots of those "afk 5 min" types of breaks in the middle of grouping. I don't know how it is now since they all play at night but it's one of the biggest reasons for boxing. Being able to log on and get stuff done on your own time is really nice.

It's awesome that you are in contact with other boxers on your server. I've seen a couple of 2- 3 boxers on Crushbone running around at 5am but the server isn't terribly active at that time. However, I'm in still in the lower levels with my team(s), so I'm guessing it will change once I get into the mid-high levels.

Just to update. I got my team to 70,70,70,71,71,80. After running around having fun in old zones i couldn't do before and crawling through some dungeons/instances i decided to take Noxxys advice and head over to Kunark.

After an initial test run i quickly figured out that there are 3 faction writ givers and everyone has to be level 70 for this to work properly. I mentored everyone down to 70 and hit up the Gorowyin, Neriak and Freeport writ givers. All i can say is wow. Littery within just a couple of hours i was up to lvl 22. You can go for the Drachnids to the right first to get two writs then over to the drolvargs for 3 more, then the giants and over to the spurbones and up to wack yeti's and escape back down the docks.

it's fun too because i just came from the Mistmoore Catacombs and the Valdoon instance (which was a learning curve) so yeah it was fun to just run around killing some easy mobs.

oh yeah i might just add an unrelated tip here about the Mistmoore Catacombs. If you have a coercers make sure you possess essence a blight beast... you will know what i mean after you do.

so yeah thanks for the tips people!