The Hidden Forest

Hi,

I played Everquest up through Velious then bounced around between World of Warcraft and Warhammer but this will be my first time on any type of emulator server.

My friends and I do not box and are not extremely interested in any type of raiding (or serious time commitment) so we assumed that our options would be very limited as to the content we would be able to experience.

However, I have noticed that this server allows bots. Am I correct in assuming that with 3 seperate people ( seperate ip's) we would be able to put a full group together or are there limits on the number of bots in a group in which case we would only be able to put together a group of 4? Is 4 enough to experience dungeons and normal 6 man content?

Also, how do bots work exactly? Is there a tutorial I need to read on controlling one or is the equivalen of a standard pet bar with attack,guard,defend,etc? Do you control your bot's equipment and AA's? Can you have a stable of different bots to use in different situations?

In regards to leveling and gear. I read in one of the posts that characters start with level 50 melee weapons. How does this affect vanilla everquest and the gear from its dungeons, unrest, sola, etc?

Our original intentions were to play vanilla eq through to velious, experiencing as much content (without severely out leveling it, or out gearing it) that we could with a group of 3-4 real life players. Is this a viable goal or should we instead plan the game starting at 50 when we finally surpassing our starting gear and always be looking for group?

Are old world items such a jboots or rubicite breastpiece/manastone in the game? Is there alot of competition for these items?

With the experience bonus, how fast do you level. Would we level so quickly that we would miss or skip by alot of the low level content?

Finally, what class combos and specifically main/bot combos would you recommend? I had intended to play a necro and my friend a shaman. Should i stay away from casters (as I read in a recent post) since their damage is based on their spell levels exclusively?

Other classes I would be interested in playing as my main would be a monk a bard and a enchanter.

Sorry if this is all covered in a post somewhere that I missed and thanks for all the help. My friends and I are very excited to rejoin the everquest community.

Thanks,
Citizen

Some how I completely missed the Guides section of the message board. Feel free to answer anything not in the guides.

Thanks and see you in game.

Played eq for 8 years,a nd wow for 2 . Your live eq experience will give you 2 things. Experience in combat and some experience in getting around.
The rest is different. There are tasks in the zones (custom zones) faiires will send you to .
Do these for decent to great items. Some you will hold onto for a looong time. Comp heal/gather mana orb for one.
Make sure you do the headhunter tasks. They are lifetime (or feels like it) tasks and reward a really nice 3 slot mask you will keep if you dont intend to raid.

Bots: 1 bot PER group. 1 players or 5.. still 1 per group.
#bot help for a list of commands. most used: #bot report mana.. #bot giveitem.. #bot summon.. # bot group attack (attack your current target)
Bots gain spells skills and aa's (but not all aa's) as they lvl. to level them zone, resummon them or #bot update.

Gear: You can quest you epic 1.0 from crush and velious standard armor from there as well. collect patterns and the materials. buy a symbol for your class and hand in. Paludal also for this.

You wont play vanila eq here. The custom zones, with custom gear/loot/tasks are the place to be. You can level quite fast with the rewards from tasks/mob loot. You might spend quite a while in guk/KC/seb/solb camping gear off nameds. talking 200 hp/mana + gear in these zones btw.
Jboots drop. Dvinn drops jboots and fabled jboots. depending if you get fabled dvinn or not.
Havent come across a rubi BP. Manastone.. I've thrown a few away.. fabled crush and dvinn both can drop it.
Exp .. 3x exp means if you can get into a spot to kill yellows ( a grp of 4 of you should plow through these) you will lvl fairly quick and by the time they go blue a few lvls later you will be mass pulling.
Combo's : Thats a play style thing really. Sk's are semi broken (life taps/drain procs) Apparently necro's also have issues.. Any fighter class can use a clr bot, and any healer can use a war/pally bot to great effect. Depends on what you and your friends intend to do. Mages, atm, don't do anything the damage they do on live.
Roll classes that work towards a stable grp, and use a bot to fill in a spot, either dps or heals.
Talk to people in game. ask in /ooc (its global) and ignore the few clowns we have, and you can get some good advice.

Chopha

Welcome to THF

This server is the EQ you remember on crack. No one really cares about stuff like rubi bps cause the armor you'll be getting after a few hours will be 100+ hp. Everything's completely custom.. you can still go back and visit (some) of the old zones you remember, if you want.

I just want to say that basicaly the gameplay on the THF feels like you starting right off level 35+ dificulty, but with lev 50 gear, and then dificulty will build up even faster than that. So the epics and PoP ornate from crushbone will feel like easy game for a first 20 levels, but then the dificulty will be in line Tier 1 PoP zones. So its actualy very chalanging. If you are playing with 3-4 RL friends (+1 bot) you will be fine, and could prabobly even do some lower tier raids.