[EQ2] Khatovar, Frosty and others.... You really did it now! (plus some EQ2 tidbits)

[moosejaw]

I wanted to follow up on my initial impressions of EQ2 regarding gameplay/hardware/software. Currently my 6 box group is L20 with 14aa's after about 3 days of raf play.

Gameplay: Enough has been stated about endgame so I want to address general gameplay. The game is very boxable regardless of group size. I have only encountered one quest that I couldn't share (1-20) and that includes all quest chain steps. Collection quests are a non factor. Most of them are guaranteed drop, the rare drop type are not really that rare and are relatively painless. Collection quest items are auto looted (no action on your part) and don't take up bag space. You will see an on screen message similar to a raid warning that the mob either did or did not drop what you needed. Yes, they tell you if you didn't find a quest item. :thumbup:

Quest givers are visible from a distance before they ever show up on the minimap. There is a nice glow around the feather over their head that can been seen well, even on low graphics. There are tons of quest starter items available as drops from mobs. These are usually kill quests and are repeatable by getting the drop again after completing the quest. Some quests require looting items from mobs (gnoll language quest is one). Lets say there is a quest item on a mob that you (master character) don't need but a slave does. You will see the loot icon (tiny treasure chest) when you hover over the mob but when you try to loot it you will get a chat message that there isn't any loot on this mob for you. Since mob corpses disappear very quickly, this helps prevent missing important quest loot. When clearing out an area, you really clear it out so an unlooted mob will stand out so you don't miss any loot.

Moving around and following has its ups and downs. The follow is nearly unbreakable, even in combat, and has a very long range. You can use your turn left and right while on follow if you are stuck on an obstacle (it acts like a strafe) to catch up. Yet follow has its limitations such as going up stairs or tight passages with turns. The follow has a somewhat long leash which is awesome in combat because your tank is free to move around a bit while your group/blob stays in place on follow. Speaking of combat, casters need not face the target to cast spells on them. Let me repeat. Casters do not need to face the target to cast spells on them. Melee positioning in combat is a little funky right now so I will skip that. When entering combat with the tank/melee, the tank/melee will leash to the mob and your movement controls will work a little differently but the leashing helps you when used with '/autoattack 1' to autoface the face the mob.

Hardware/Software: EQ2 is not Wow and requires more resources. The fact that I can not find a way to disable the sound on the slaves hurts. Hardware sound doesn't work right now because EAX is broken when used with EQ2 and more than instance. This means that all sound is software rendered and there isn't a toggle in sound options to turn of in game sound just volume sliders to work with. That said, my system is a 3.0ghz Q6600 8gb ram HD4870 1gb video with all instances displayed on one monitor (2 monitor setup though). Six instances of EQ2 brings this system to its knees. Core 0,1, 2 are about 60-70% while #4 stays maxxed. I use Innerspace in conjunction with ISBoxer for EQ2. All the game instances are spread across all cores for load balancing but I might try to adjust that for Core 3. The game is playable with normal 20-30 fps on the master slaves locked at 15 fps. Busy areas ( cities) will drop the main to 10 fps and it feels a little sketchy but is still fine to play. Low fps is where the follow system really shines, I haven't lost a follower at low fps yet.

I think an upgrade to an I7 based system is in order for my boxing needs. My components are good except for the processor bottle neck. My current system will be turned into a HTPC.

Combat/Macros: Utilizing Khatovars macro guide and overlapping keys between characters makes combat easier. The macro system is simple yet powerfull. Implied targeting for hostile/friendly spells makes landing heals or nukes super easy, just use one assist button on the slaves to get the target (not including special assists for CC). Tossing a heal gets the mobs target, firing a nuke lands on your target (if hostile) and just reverse it if you have a friendly targeted. This keeps your mind on your tank control and makes healing a snap.



Enough rambling for now.

[Crayonbox]

Damn it! Why are you guys all on nektulos server? Antonia Bayle is by far more populated! Come here! haha

[moosejaw]

I asked around before I rolled and it seemed that Nektulos was the popular server. Khat was the only one on AB then. Now all you necro players show up!!

I think there is going to be many people joining up soon so spreading out the boxers shouldn't hurt. Heck with a raid limit of 24 (?) and 2 group content it shouldn't take much to get rolling now. We just have to level and get geared. ^^

[Crayonbox]

Honestly, gear isnt a big problem until you get to level cap. The best gear at your level and anywhere near your level is almost always the mastercrafted gear. everything else pretty much pales.

and more people for AB!

[Frosty]

Level 20!!! I'm logging in now to level! :P

[moosejaw]

Honestly, gear isnt a big problem until you get to level cap. The best gear at your level and anywhere near your level is almost always the mastercrafted gear. everything else pretty much pales.

and more people for AB!

Yeah I meant Level cap gearing. No illusions of buying crafted gear right now and I don't have an armor crafter.

[Khatovar]

I'm on the other RP server, Lucan D'Lere. There was someone else on AB, though.

I have only encountered one quest that I couldn't share (1-20) and that includes all quest chain steps

One thing I want to point out about sharable quests...in WoW, if a quest gave you an item to use, you can be sure it wasn't sharable. In EQ2, quests that have use items are almost always sharable and sharing it gives the item to everyone who accepts the quest! I can't tell you how much I adore that. Esepcially if you somehow screw up and blow your charges. You can just drop the quest on the one and re-share to get a fully charged item. It is the love for multiboxers. Deleting quests with items will also remove the item from your inventory, so if you drop a grey quest or something, you don't have to dig through your bags to find the item and destroy it.

Writs, however, are not sharable after you do it once. Same with repeatable faction quests.

Also, something to look toward in the future. Once your strength gets up, you can switch to carrying boxes instead of bags. It's a biiiig tradeoff, since boxes weigh 100 each and have no weight reduction vs bags that weigh 5 and have a lot of weight reduction, but the high-end box has 36 slots vs the bag's 24. My husband carries a few boxes since he has high strength on his tank, but I carry only 2 since I have low strength on my fury {I've yet to get around to kitting out my containers on my team}. It's easier to do with a boxed group, though, since you generally get a STR buff somewhere from your group. Just beware if you have to call your toons back to different locations. If you lose your STR buff, you can get encumbered and movement will slow to a crawl.

[Crayonbox]

Don't know what to tell you if youre 20. If you're under I would have told you to go do the TD quests because the armor rewards are vastly superior to any others.
Also since you are multiboxing, find a nice zone to camp names in.
I farmed stormhold, wc, and fg for the longest times farming master books to sell. I ended up with more than enough money to gear my guys out with the best gear.

fyi: 1 scout is amazing. Tracking is a life saver for so many things.

[Herc130]

TD diffinently the way to go. Newbie gear is a bit better and the quest line is pretty straight forward and easy to box through. I like good better then evil, so I always start all my toons out in Qeynos newbie island. I do the first 3 or 4 quest there and level up to around 4 and a half and then head over to TD. I usually just ding lvl 10 right when I am offered the first lvl10 quest (only killing mobs for quest line) and then I turn quest exp. off so that now any quest I complete only goes towards AA's. Even so, I thought I was still leveling too fast. Soloed my guardian to lvl15 with 11AA's before I activated my other accounts. I had to modify that guardians name, because some jerk had stolen my name!!! Once I activated one of my old accounts.....I realized I was that jerk lol. So, I started my guardian over with the name I wanted. All still only lvl10 and at TD on AB server. Still trying to figure out how best to set-up my hotkeys and xkeys. I don't know if boxing on an over crowded server will be easy, as when I box in EQ1, I usually dominate an area....whcih was no problem, because most areas are compltetely unused. But I like seeing people running all around me and I don't always box. Also, if you plan on raiding, try to make your tank your one toon you raid with. I know boxers that are raid tanks as their mains and their box team kicks ass, just bcecause their tank are tremendously overpowered compared to the rest of their boxes. Doesn't work too well the other way around. An overpowered healer is still limited to how well a tank tanks. A rogue with uber gear, crazy ass daggers and every DPS AA you can think off....will be the tank in a box team with a weak tank, because to not pull agro off the poorly geared tank, I'd have to be doing nothing through a good portion of the fight. There is a balance for tank (survivability and keeping agro off your other boxes), healer and DPS, but that balance is skewed seriouly towards the tank. In EQ1, a lvl44 cleric ( when they get complete heal) can keep a lvl 85 warrior up in some lvl80+ contents, but no way in hell will even a team of lvl85 clerics keep one lvl44 warrior up in lvl80+ content.......without the clerics becoming the tank themselves and assuming the lvl44 tank doesn't get one rounded...which you cannot heal through. I think EQ2 is the same way. So yah, make sure you keep feeding upgrades to your tank first.

[Crayonbox]

As far as I can tell, EQ2 is the same way. Fights are far easier when my tank upgrades his gear.