Pre-Tier 2 content balance

[Noren]

any advice then pls?
but the thing here that feels strange, is that suddenly at this point you hit the wall..

It makes me sad that you feel you've hit a wall! Achieving lvl 70 should be opening up many doors for you - not closing them.

As for advice: I agree with Chrom. Once you get some more AAs, everything changes.

Dps/healers are downright BAD until 150aa. Tanks are awful until 200-250. I took at a look at your tank, and saw that you have 33 AAs on that toon. Not a criticism, just an observation. I think things will drastically change for you when you get more (which only requires a little grinding in Tipt or some other zone. Tipt is my personal preference).

The devs did an awesome job taking some of the brutal grind out of the original EQ, while still leaving the self-rewarding grind in tact. With the huge exp mod on THF, I think you'll find those AAs will go pretty quickly in Tipt.

So, once your dps/healers are around 150 AA and your tank around 250 AA, then it's time to tackle progression and quest content. Goof around, help people, get in way over your head in some tough fights, steam roll over some other ones, build your toons, ask for help, make some more friends. I assure you that there are countless hours of fun to be had, if you look in the right places.

You can do...
*Aura quests: wiki/index.php/Solo_Aura_Quest
*Epic quests: although you seem uninterested in the epic 1.5, you cannot deny the awesome click effects on them and the fact that they are requirements for the epic 2.0 and T6 progression.
*Hunt world bosses.
*Work on achievements.
I think I've rambled enough on those.

Ultimately, I think you're frustrated by tackling content in a way that it wasn't designed. I think some AA grind for new 70s is the underlying requirement for a lot- nay all, of lvl 70 content. Heck there's even a 70+ exp teleporter!

At any rate, you've got a fine looking 6-toon team. Put in a little grind for the AAs and the world is your oyster =)

[mobsterer]

AAs make that much of a difference eh? i would not have thought.

thank you for this great tip!

[Deadspirit]

LDON is a huge help - when I first started Hidden Forest I felt like I was in the same situation. Going through the LDONs gave great AAxp, a moderate challenge and loot which can be upgraded to rival tier 5+ loots.

Make sure that you don't buy LDON loot that will fill a primary armor slot for some classes - I have had best results filling earrings/belts/shoulders with these items.

Also, LDONs have plenty of Gem drops so you will be able to key for TOV if you don't want to do the Emp Encounter solo yet.

Stillmoon will have the best return on investment for armor drops - A trash mob will drop a BP which you would normally have to quest and kill Dozz for.

If your tank doesnt have 35AC stones in every slot you're not doing it right... This farm will give you a bunch of AA.

I'm sure you don't want too many spoilers - but like stated above - Go for Aura, epic1.5, LDON and upgraded charm....

PM/post or tell ingame if you want more pro-noob tips.

[Stickybuds]

pretty much spot on. Once you hit 70, you need to spend a good chunk of time getting a few hundred AAs before you can expect to hang in the 70+ group zones. Make sure you are getting those combat agility and combat stability AAs, even for melee dps classes, and eventually all classes. Everyone is going to get hit at some point and these AAs make a night and day difference.

Also, it can be a bit confusing as what to do next when you hit 70, i recommend checking out this post, although it is a bit outdated it is still great info

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=207

oh one more thing, those 35ac augs, those are some of the best augs until at least T3 and sometimes beyond. Make sure you are farming those for your tank. Can farm those and AA at the same time.

[jahosphat]

Having been nearly all solo in my time on the server i have a few comments.

I am trying to put these in order of priotity
1) The grind between 50-60 just flat out sucks.. for one you are in a transition period between GUK and SEB/Lair. The XP is already bad in both plus your going through hell levels... so that makes it very hard.
2) Once you hit 70 AND you're not the right class it is hard to move on Solo. Bots in their current state can't tank (in my case) the 70+ solo content without a massive amount of downtime.
3) AA's are not easy to get at 70.. takes a long time before you can move on. UNLESS you are a pet class.
4) The Epic 1.5 takes too long to gather all the materials for what it is...

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love the server.. figure i'd chime in...

Thanks for all the hard work.

[Ydiss]

I thought I'd touch on the comment above regarding the 1.5 quest . This is from the perspective of someone who was around a couple years ago, had a break and recently returned. I was playing when the spawn timers for the mobs was reduced to 2 hours and 6 hours, with the drop rate being reduced to 2. It made sense at the time. Doing the epic was originally about being able to take the mobs down. Competition was strong, but if you saw the mobs up you'd usually be able to run through well enough.

Now, I've returned to the server and the quest is the same but there are tons more players here (a great thing). I've had to complete the 1.5 for about 5 characters and it was a nightmare to even get it done once, due to the spawns being permanently down. At one point I timed the spawn perfectly, zoned in to bb, completely empty zone. I was running to the unicorn and I turned up to see a group gating out over its dead body. They must have been camped out ready for it.

The competition for the 1.5 quest is extremely high (no doubt, the freedom to box several toons is another factor, but it's mainly because the server is rightfully more popular) and has altered the apparent difficulty of the quest considerably.

And that's for me, with t6 characters. I dread to imagine how tough it must be for a brand new player attempting it for the first time.

This isn't a suggestion for change, necessarily. Just an observation from someone who has done the same quest and found it to be ultra hard compared to how it used to be, without any changes being made to the quest.

[Safiya]

Maybe I got lucky since I am in very different timezone than most players but I banged out the 1.5 on 6 toons in no time. I could have done it much faster I am sure but didn't want to move much from Trak's spawn until I had everything I needed. Popped out twice to snag all the nameds that's it. Did the Unicorns after. Here is the secret...park your toons on the spawn and get a book to read. That's it. Logging in just before the mob pops is risky. Maybe somebody else is already in game waiting.....

That said, I have hit my own little wall. Emp Ssra. He just crushes me. Completely curbstomps me. I can get Blood down np and keep control of the adds the lazy way (just tank them all) but Emp eats my face. I have more corpses in his room than I care to admit. It seems a rather steep increase in difficulty...which it should be....but perhaps too steep? Or maybe (quite likely actually) I am doing something wrong....very wrong.

I have 3 healers who should be able to keep all debuffs/curses off of the tank. Tank has pretty much all defensive aa's I think...I am working on riposte now but all the real sexy def aa's are finished. 260ish aa atm on the tank and the rest are not too far behind for the most part. All have their important aa's anyway.

Warrior/Cleric/Shaman/Druid/Rogue/Mage

I have a feeling my little group can kill in ToV but it's getting there that is kicking my butt. Many have offered to help me plow through Ssra...and I may have to finally accept their offers if I can find them online again. I had wanted to do this myself but I am out of patience.

I am quite new at 6 boxing so maybe that is a large part of my problem.

[soberteq]

If you can box t1 in t1 gear then you are obviously doing something right. Emp is hard but it is raid event, not a 6 man thing. Perhaps keep on gearing all six toon. People often think that they need more heals while in fact more dps would help. You are very courageous and I hope you will keep it up. I skipped the progression at some point because I was tired to be alone and guildies offered me a token.

Don't know what to say about the unicorns. I killed them more then 10 times in the last 3 months. I never camped them. When I log in I check, before I log out I check. Getting Melafen in epic 2.0 quest is something terrible. I am happy to have my 6 box done.

[Ydiss]

Time zone may have something to do with it. I've been doing it this weekend. Each time I've logged in only 2/4 of each set has been up. Managed to get it down to just needing Mistmoore now, and he was being killed as I zoned in (with the others all down). It's no big deal, but since I came back I've never been able to do the 1.5 in one sitting for the 5-odd times I've needed to do it. Before, I think I only had to part-complete the quest once or twice out of about 10 characters.

But then it's simple logistics. When I played previously, the server concurrent user record was between 150 and 200. It's much higher than that now, so any contestable content quest is likely to be more difficult than before.

[Stickybuds]

In regards to emp ssra use one healer to spam RGC non-stop on the tank, the others for healing.