ProgressionQuest: A Journal

Hi guys. This might be nutty, but I journaled my progression and I always said to myself I'd post it when I got to PoTime. Anyways, feel free to read/comment/ignore me forever.

Preamble:

I've been a long time EQ player; P1999, live in the early 2000's, TLP's. I've played some other MMO's too; I never really did any of the EQEmu thing; I said boxing seemed too complicated and unfun. High end P1999 is a little stale, and I got tired of the rush-rush-rush go-go-go of the TLP's, but the real thing that started this quest for me was meeting a RL friend – a coworker, who told me about PEQ, gave me advice, and gave me some plat to get spells – which miraculously I got spells to 65 before the PoK vendors were nerfed, which is a huge save.

I am solo-ish and self found-ish. I haven't really traded for gear, but I've traded for tradeskills, spells and epic pieces. For example;

I sold a fully charged staff of Forbidden Rites to Barbatos for 2.5 million platinum, which will eventually cover Qvic armor, and I bought a slime blood of cazic thule for my necro epic for 20kpp. I bought lots of OoW augment materials, and some other tradeskill materials. I bought some OoW muramite runes.

I had someone help me with an AoW kill, and someone help me get the Soul Leech for the SK epic. I teamed up for Smith Rondo, Rallos Zek, Coirnav, Xegony, and Rathe Council. Generally I'll note if I bought something or paired up in the material below.

My extra gear is getting sent to my mages/rangers, level 52 vox box, and tributed if good value, though I did give ~120 pieces of ornate defiant to the one copper bots, and have donated other good gear that has no tribute value to the bots (attunable mostly; so much magnetic armor).

Group composition: I wanted each group to work on it's own, so every group is Tank – Clr – Bard – Porter (wiz or Dru) – slower (shm/enc/bst/necro) – DPS. I wanted one of every class, which means 24 characters, so I could do each epic and experience more content. I also had a Vox/Naggy Box (War-Clr-Brd-Bst-Ber-Rng) and a track and COH box (ranger-ranger-ranger-mage-mage-mage, which got PL'ed with an out of group cleric).

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Part 1: The Quest to 51 and Tier0 Raids.

Group 1: War, Clr, Brd, Wiz, Shm, Rog

Newbie zone: I ran this to level 11, and died a fair bit in the process figuring out how to play. The weapons I'll put away once I get something old world (in Unrest), because they're too good. I do enjoy this zone. The other random stuff I'll use. I didn't get a full set of armor on any character. I am destroying various defiant pieces/not looting them/vendoring them for a few plat.

I played in Crushbone to level 20, hoping to equip all three melee characters with dragoon dirk and screaming mace. I got 2 dragoon dirks from 5-6 D'vinns, and no screaming maces: I never got a brass earring from 5 task master spawns. I got 2 shiny brass shields, only one bracer of battle, and 6 dwarven ringmail tunics.

I am using PoK spell vendors, and out of era spells.

Unrest floor 1 was good from 20-22, then I did floor 2 from 24--->32 or so looking for caster bracers from hand, reclusive ghoul magic loot, barkeep loot, then undead knight tower. I got no bracers from 4 or 5 hand spawns, 4 savants caps, one savants gloves, a bloodstained tunic, 4 barkeep aprons, 4 bloodstained pauldrons. I did the basement from 32-35, and did not see Garnael Rucksiff spawn.

I had a few wipes, evacs, and even one train to zone, almost every time caused by either A) a mob fleeing or B) being feared by the undead knight of unrest, or C) knockback from the tentacle terrors. Pulling reasonable amounts of mobs and handling them was fine, but any position disruption was brutal.

Then I headed to mistmoore. My first bunch of attempts at mistmoore weren't great. It feels slow and hard; probably in part because my gear is lagging behind; multiple characters have open slots, and I think in classic EQ the assumption was more or less that around 20-30 you'd go across the world and quest and loot and trade in various dungeons to get decent starter items in each slot, or at least pay for full banded. I also had to grind through low cons to get to the blues, though I got my bard a flute for invis so hopefully that helps. Then at castle entrance, the pulls were often 3-5 mobs, so learning to pull the zone (and use bard and clerics pacify) is going to take a bit. Exp felt slow, but some of that was definitely the dying and evacing. I learned the zone better, and it got better, but fear still was a serious risk and issue; a bad fear could result in 6-10 adds to an already 2-4 pull. Fleeing mobs or mobs stuck under the floor also sometimes caused issues. I grinded mistmoore out until level 42 for everyone...which yeah, wow, felt super slow, and most of the zoon was light blue and green.

I saw very few of the named and got very little of the named loot. I got Maid, Butler, Cloaked Vhamphyr, Clarissa all once, I got a few imp familiars, and I never saw a bunch of major named or loot. In general, Mistmoore felt like a big bust, largely due to fear, mobs or characters getting stuck.

I went to Lower Guk (dead side) which was a pretty big success by comparison. Exp was better than Mistmoore, but slower than unrest (it felt really, really fast in Unrest?), but it came fast enough, and there was lots of good loot in the process, too. Lower guk felt great; I'd do a loop of the tower up to ass/sup/ritualist, drop back down to safehall, then do a loop of frenzy/sentinel, archmage/hand/ghoul lord, then repeat. I think the whole loop took around 45 minutes, and I'd consistently see 4-8 named. On Tower side there were 7 named each with a 30% spawn, and on lord side there were 3 frenzy chances at 10% each, 100% on the hand, and 30% on the lord, archmage, and sentinel, which meant by numbers, I should have seen about 4 named every pass. I think I saw more; I got 2 SSOY's, 2 assassin snare daggers (plus masks of deception for rogue and bard), and basically every other slot item I could use; only one Archmagi's robe, but the biggest disappointment was I only saw 2 frenzied ghouls; both dropped moonstone rings, so no FBSS.

I took around 4.5 weeks, playing 1-2 hours a day, to hit level 51. I went to SolB to explore a bit while waiting the remaining time to create accounts for the rest of my boxes. Kobolds were easy, efreetis' were hard, giants were impossible.

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Group 2: Pal, Clr, Brd, Wiz, Enc, Ber

From the newbie zone at 10 to Blackburrow. I wasn't impressed with Blackburrow; even in the deep, higher level section of the dungeon there were a tonne of grey cons that agroed but didn't provide exp. By 12-13 I was killing every single blue-white-yellow-red con I would find and still waiting for repops – I camped near snake pit, and pulled the 4 from elite room and 4 from commander room.

At 14 I went to Runneye Citadel. A few mobs on the top floor were blue, but I learned to break and pull the second floor. Evil Eye room wiped me a couple times before I eventually learned to leave it well enough alone. Once I figured out how to handle the second floor, exp flew by; though I didn't see much of the second floor named loot. At around 20 I went to the 3rd floor, which again, seemed super fast exp wise; the sporali were weak, and this floor felt much easier than the second floor. I got the mold master several times, including 9% haste gloves, a couple caster shields, and every character in the group looted a lore pal/sk one hander. At 27, the floor was mostly green/grey/light blue, so it was time to move deeper.

My first run of the 4th floor was good; numerous named, 2 levels in 45 minutes, lots of blackened alloy, a medallion, and a BABS. I didn't realize Runneye was re-done, but looking at the loot, it is clear it is; the Blackened Alloy Bastard Sword, at 24/39, has a much better ratio than old world 2handers, which generally capped at around 50% ratios' (Mithril 2 hander and Soulfire come to mind). I levelled on 4 until 31 or so; at which point everything was light blue/green except the named mobs (which still conned white/yellow; the level gap between regular goblins and the named mobs was huge). I went back to 2 to get revenge on the imprisoned evil eyes.

Then I headed to Lower Guk, live side. Upper Guk actually still provided a decent amount of experience travelling through around Crocs/North end. Lots of shins that we're dark blue. 31-40 was pretty rough; some evacs and wipes through minotaurs until I got pretty strong for it, and I never made it through Minotaur area. Once I was 40 it was smoother sailing; figuring out how to split a few of the later rooms was a bit tricky, but by late 40s, a 30 minute cycle (the guk respawn time) could take me through evil eye, priest/crusader, noble, herbalist, and king, and then back.
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Group 3: Sk, Clr, Brd, Dru, Bst, Mage

From the newbie zone to Befallen: Even slightly twinked out (remember, these characters pretty much only get gear from the zones listed above) this zone is tough. The mobs are paper thin, but fear can immediately result in 4-6 adds. I got feared into a pit, which resulted in a character having a corpse I never found and had to expedient recover. I went into the pit with the rest of the group looking for it, and we never found the corpse. Adds aggroed from fear spells eventually killed the group, and I made another attempt after summoning the corpses. The second attempt went better, and exp to 20 felt very, very fast, aside from a single death on my tank from getting harm touched twice.

I then went to Najena. Pulling the first key room was a bit of a mess after getting feared and aggroing 2 extra mobs, but I was able to kill them all. It feels like a beastlord and a mage are huge carries for this group; I don't know if pet classes are generally considered very strong levelling in this era, but they feel great. Najena felt like very good, very fast exp, despite the fact that green and no exp grey cons were mixed in with red con nameds. I never did see Najena herself, but I got most of the other named in the zone a few times.

After that I went to Dalnir. For a zone that is famously terrible, the first run at it was actually pretty smooth; I cleared the first floor 3-4 times before finally getting a fear that resulted in numerous adds, which then I evacced, lost my beastlord, but somehow the corpse ended up way in the south of the zone, and I couldn't rescue it, so I had to evac and try again. I got through the second floor on my second attempt, and saw none of the interesting named loot. Exp is pretty good. On my 3rd run I finally went for the 3rd floor, killing the boss with harmtouch since it has a 20s stun and 500 point AE, but still not seeing much of the nameds or named loots. I left at 38.

From 38-42, I hunted in Kaesora. Despite EQ Atlas calling this a "doable" dungeon, my first two attempts involved getting feared and 6-12 adds on the very first pull, resulting in total wipes. My third break in I used infusion of the faithful and that worked, and one I got out of spiders and into undead, the necromancers that cast fear were rarer. Undead was good exp from 38-42, and I got Xalgoz 3 times, which means this group can key for Howling Stones.

After which I moved to Sol B. I did 3-4 levels in kobolds which were fast and easy, 2-3 levels in spiders and bats which I liked less, and my last 2 levels in Efreeti, which was neat, since I tried that camp with my first group and couldn't really handle it. It really does feel like this group is a lot stronger than some of my other ones, and it really does feel like having 2 pet classes in the same group was what carried it. I got most of the named items once or twice, though I never saw Djarns Amythest Ring.

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Group 4: Rng, Clr, Brd, Dru, Mnk, Necro

After the newbie zone at 9-10, I went to the Warrens. Holy shit exp was fast in the warrens. I got levels 10-22 in probably a little over 2 hours. Tonnes of blues and even cons to kill everywhere. What a great zone. One major disapppointed? The named mostly didn't drop loot, which I swear they did on live at one point. I left at 25, after killing Mugglewump a few times. I only got 4 kobold molars in this time, which I destroyed rather than bothering to turn in; I remember turning bags and bags and bags of them in in Paineel on live. Exp honestly is probably overtuned?

I then went to SolA at 25 and hit goblins. I don't know what was going on with SolA, but exp felt terrible. Loot was great; tonnes of fine steel, gems, bricks of ore, all that sold well, but exp was perhaps the slowest I've seen. I camped the entrance, then barroom, then King. The only real gold spot on SolA was getting a Lord Gimblox spawn, getting me a cleric epic piece. That was nice.

I left at 35 and headed to City of Mist, which people in OOC said would be fine, but was a little tough. There was a level 49 mighty golem spawned right at the entrance that took two attempts to kill (I believe my vet AA's were down for some reason at the time), and in general my group wasn't really handling the repop raging golems unless I was full mana before every pull. But the exp was still decently fast, and it got easier as I got through into my early 40's. The loot here is revamped, so utterly disproportionate to anything else you'd get at this level except from other revamped zones and things that were Kunark area raid drops now come from level 40 group nameds. 10/22 weapons, 20/40 hp/mana necks and shoulders with stats, etc. The front half of CoM had more nameds spawn, but the back half with slightly higher level monsters dropped gems like crazy, and 40-51 was decently quick.

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Group 5: Warrior, Clr, Bard, Bst, Rng, Ber

After leaving the Newbie zone I went to Kurn's Tower at 10; 10-20 was super fast in Kurns tower, with densly packed mobs; the only real problem once again was constant fears, but since this group is using defiant, and the rest of the groups weren't, a fair bit was collected, and that helped power through it. Eventually at 20 I dropped into the tunnels, got a pull of 4, had three characters feared, and fought my way through a pull of 11 mobs with 4 of my six characters dying before throning the remaining two and leaving. Levelling was perhaps too fast, and I didn't get nearly as many bone chips as I'd hoped (maybe 60?). Luckily I found lots more on some random vendors.

I did 20-25 in Netherbethian Lair, which felt quick, fast, and easy. Lots of good cons packed together, and with the group having the level 16+ defiant equipped at this point, most characters had defiant in most main slots, and it felt really easy to grind through the mobs.

I then headed to Tower of Frozen Shadow. Pulling on the first floor is such a pain in the ass with the pit, but luckily I got the key to the second floor super fast. 25 seems like it may be a bit early to head up there...and it was. Mobs were hard, and I had to use vet AA's to get out of sticky situations sometimes. Because every single mob feared once or twice per fight, I had to stay clumped in the entrance, which meant for long, slow pulls. I stayed on the second floor to 35,when things where light blueing out, and the only thing that carried me through this was defiant gear. By 35, most of my guys had 150ish magic resist, which let them resist and break fear early enough against the light blues that it wasn't to bad. Overall, my experience is that fear on PEQ is far more a serious issue than I remember fear on live being.

At 35 I went to the 3rd floor, which was easy. I did 3-4 full clears, got the key, some of the mobs were light blue, and went to the 4th floor.

The 4th floor was hard. The regular mobs (mummies and goos) were good, and good exp, but the shadows feared (again, always a problem) and the named mobs both proc a long duration stun, 1 minute 100hp/tick dot, and complete heal. I had serious issues and barely pulled through kills, and had a couple partial wipes, until I got near 40, and until I was dilligent about memming 3 stuns on my cleric.

By comparsion, the 5th floor felt easy. The mobs were lower level, and even though there were mass pulls, the fights were still noticeably easier. I never wiped and there were no real issues. Between the 4th and 5th floor, I moved to the 6th floor at 44 or so.

I got the key on the 6th floor pretty fast, but the port to the 7th doesn't work right, so I ended up porting out and running through the zone again. The full group hit 45, then I managed to port 5 out of 6 characters to the 7th floor. I did one clear, didn't see Tserrina, then left because it was too annoying having one character stuck in the wrong place.

I went to Veksar at 45, which I thought was a bit early, and arguably it was. Definitely the ornate defiant and vet AA's carried me through the first few levels; bloodgills were mostly white-yellow, and the non-named crusaders and reverants in the first area up the ramp were all red. The first named (Champion Kamak) is a super big doozy; immune to slow and deals a lot of damage, and I had to use staunch recovery to beat him a few times. But once I got to 48 or so, things started smoothing out and speeding up. The gear in here is noticeably casually eras better than anything else; 65hp/mana chain coifs, 40hp/mana belts, 35/55 hp/mana rings, 40/40 int caster necklace; it's probably about the equivalent to Veeshan's Peak 1.0 loot or lower end velious stuff, from an early 50's group zone. The Vox Box will use it out of era, since they're using defiant as well, but the rest of the guys won't equip it until Kunark is over and levelling to 65 for Velious. (I'm overlevelling a bit to make content easier, and getting AA's earlier in progression too, though we'll see how much patience I have for that). By 52 most of the pre-Veksar golems area was doable, and I made one run down to golems too to hit a named that was up, though that area was yellow cons solidly at 52 and pretty slow/tough. I do love Veksar though; I remember it being released on live and grouping there the day it came out for the fun of it for a few AA's, and using ITU potions + camo + Earthcaller to work through the zone and solo random named for loot as a ranger.

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Group 6: Ranger+Ranger+Ranger+Mage+Mage+Mage + out of group 51 CLR

Group 6 was three rangers and three mages, for track and CoH bots. This is another group that gets Defiant gear, as it isn't a core group. I started in the newbie zone using Steadfast servants and potions, and generally didn't have any real trouble, especially with a smattering of defiant. From there, I had my level 52 Vox cleric join the group in Upper Guk.

Upper Guk felt like really fast and easy exp, but that might be because this is the most power levelled group. None of the itemization in guk was super interesting or useful at this point, but I enjoyed crawling up and down the zone. I think I went from 12-30 in an afternoon there.

At 30 I headed to the Rygorr keep in Eastern Wastes, a place I levelled on live at one point. This was way harder than I expected or remembered, and 30 was definitely a little early; everything was yellow or red. The level range at the keep is wide, too; while the centurions and legionairres we're 31-35, the elite guards we're 40 and the Rygorr Chief is 45. I actually had partial and full wipes a couple times with the cleric dying, pulling the Rygorr Orcale and Rygorr Chief's rooms before I was ready.

At 35 I went to Crystal Caverns for 5 levels, which by comparison felt easier than I remembered; the entire zone was basically light blue except some of the deepest mobs in the 3 tunnels. On live I mostly soloed/duoed around here, which was a challenge, doing Geonids if they we're open and the other two harder camps if they weren't. But with a full group it was easy to hold down all 3 of the far end camps. The zone has 3 different hotzone augs for some reason which was interesting.

At 40 I left again and did the Rygorr Camp to 45, getting revenge on the Orcale and Chief. Then I headed to Velketor's Labyrinth; 45 is once again a little early for this zone: everything was white+yellow+red. I once again had a couple wipes/partial wipes figuring out the pulling, and exp started out a little slow until my characters gained a few more levels. The progression to 52 was pretty smooth, where I stopped them to assist my Voxbox. I'll level the mages to 55 for CoH as I need them; I'm not super sure which camps I'll actually find it worth it to put them on, but we'll see. I never actually ended up using or placing the mages.

My overall sense and experience from levelling these 6 groups to 51/52 was that zones where you can grind through large numbers of blues and lightblues and even greens offer much better experience than fighting smaller numbers of whites/yellows/reds.

Stage 0 (~Vox/Nagafen) Level 51, 0 aa – I've added Phinnegal Autoropos, one of the classic EQ 1.0 raids. Plane of Hate and Fear would be in Tier 0, except they both saw revamps.
Lady Vox – Did about 7 kills – generally easy. Did with the 6 box a few times too, mostly for epic pieces; 6 box with defiant + vet AA's had no trouble with it.

Lord Nagafen – Did about 12 kills – generally easy. Did with the 6 box a few times too, mostly for epic pieces; 6 box with defiant + vet AA's had no trouble with it.

Plane of Sky – Did 2 clears at level 60 with 50aa spent – long, tedious, hard, complex.

Phinnegal Autoropos – 30 kills thus far, bard epic piece on 1, 9, 23, and 30 at level 60 with 50aa spent. - Very easy, bard epic pieces were brutal to get.

Standouts from this tiers raids in a good way; Cloak of Flames, Prayers of Life are both great items that are valuable for a decent length of time. My warrior still has 20 Prayers of Life saved up for when it'll make or break a raid. Other Standout, in a bad way; Plane of Sky. Doing it solo was way worse than doing it with a guild.

 

The quest to 60, Tier 1 Raiding, and Epic 1.0's.

After a bunch of Naggy and Vox kills, various groups went to various places.

Group 1 (war-clr-brd-wiz-shm-rog) + group 4 (rng-clr-brd-dru-nec-mnk): Sebilis key the first group. That was way longer and slower than I wanted it to be, and I had a partial wipe when I tried to fight in a plenty of mobs crossing spot. My ranger also got rooted on pulls and killed quite often. But once I got into Sebilis, holy shit is it the promised land. I don't know if exp is way better, or the mobs are way easier, or if group one is better geared and composed (Warrior, Cleric, Bard, Shaman, Wizard, Rogue), but with the 11 minute respawn time, I did entrance and the first beetles camp before crypt, and this group hit 55 when the rest of the groups were 54, 53, and 53. It might have been a hot zone. This group hit 60 before other groups hit 56; the Karnor's group was 54. Sebilis is just way better, and I'm not sure why. I got a good chunk of the sebilis loot, but I never saw an Obulus Death Shroud, A sebsilian beserkers cloak, or a Heirophants cloak. I only did the top half of the zone, and I only did a couple clears of the left and right wings, mostly staying in the center/south wing. I'll come back here at some later point to do Myconids and Juggs.

Having now checked out a bunch of zones, Sebilis is 1.5-2* better exp than anywhere else I tried: Karnor's, Charasis, Droga, Veksar, Chardok, ChardokB, The Hole. It might have been hotzoned the entire time, but Sebilis felt better than even the Crypt of Nadox, which also was Hotzoned.

Group 2, Paladin, Cleric, Bard, Enchanter, Wizard, Berserker was a group that felt really good levelling, but went to Karnor's Castle, a zone that I recall live being considered easy and kinda like "on the kunark newbie train" where all the people looking for a real challenge went to Sebilis. Karnor's is way harder. Way more random agro from the moat + the bridge + other things on X/Y axis. A lot more roaming mobs, and constant adds. And the exp was way slower, even though this group felt good at earlier levels. I didn't have any full wipes here yet, if only because the zoneline is right there and lay of hands + berserker war cry's can do a fair bit in a pinch. On the way to 60, this was the slowest group by a large margin. At 54 they got assistance from the Sebilis group, who was already level 60, though the Sebilis group did get slightly more play time and lessons. At around 55 I couldn't handle Karnor's anymore; it just was not a good zone. I tried HateplaneB, which was atrocious experience (I was short DPS) but got some good loot, an epic item or two, some hate gear that was upgrades, some starts of Marsinger's Gems. I tried the Hole, which was decent, but I wiped deep in and honestly couldn't be bothered to try again. Then I went to Crypt of Nadox, since it was on the Hotzone list. My first attempt I started some ring event and spawned 7 mobs on myself and wiped, but my second attempt went quite well – though the exp still isn't as good as Sebilis, I think, especially when you consider this group has a support group disbanded helping it exp, whereas the Sebilis group just ran through solo. This group was the 2nd to hit 60 because of the support; Nadox was a very good zone with some good loot for the level (FT1 shoulders for int casters), and the exp and respawn time was fast.

Group 3, Shadowknight, Cleric, Bard, Beastlord, Druid, Mage, went to Charasis. They levelled in Kaesora so they already had the hard part of their key, the easy part just involved logging them in every couple hours to get the prods. While Charasis has a reputation of being a pain in the ass shit zone, between the crappy run to it, the mix of live and undead on zone in waiting to kill you, and the no rent keys everywhere, I honestly would say this was the second most successful group (though it also felt very strong levelling, possibly due to having 2 pet classes which felt like they punched above their weight). Wings 1 and 2 and 3 we're generally smooth and easy, with only needing the cleric to split pulls here and there. Wing 4 on the other hand...the first attempt at 53 wiped right at the entrance to the wing due to a fear spell drawing 5 extra mobs, and the second attempt got halfway through the 4th wing before wall agro added too mobs when my group was already low on mana from fighting 3 others. I did manage to evac that time and only had one death. I managed to clear wing 4 and Drusella Sathir at level 55, though none of the fear prone nameds we're up.

The in zone no-rent keys aren't too bad actually; only the 1st and 2nd wings require camping. The first one isn't bad, because you can clear the whole wing back to front. The 2nd wing is a pain in the ass though, because you have the stupid little ledge splitting the wing in half, resulting in camping the key mob requiring you to only clear half the floor. Each time I camped it, I ended up waiting on respawns for 5-7 minutes each pass.

The loot in this zone is more frequent than the others, though, and some of it is better. There are weapons with roughly 50% ratio for Warrior and Rogue, which is really good for this era, and a good 2 hander for a SK.

After clearing the 3rd and 4th wing and the whole zone numerous times and realizing Drusella Sathir has a 3 day spawn time, I searched for alternative zones because I found the exp slow. I took another couple shots at Chardok, and still found it impossibly dangerous. I then went to Droga; the mobs we're higher cons and more dangerous, but the loot and exp was about on par with Veksar at that point for me. I did have a near wipe and lost my SK to a bloated drognan spider, which spawned ~10-15 light blue con spiders at 20% life. Big unpleasant surprise. Otherwise, updated Droga is easy; the worst pulls you would ever get is 2-3 mobs, if you're not trying to split in any way. Droga also gives weapons slightly better than the melee epics, which honestly feels kinda sucky, since I intend to do the epic 1.0's and use them at least for a bit.

Group 4 was probably the most troubled. Ranger, Cleric, Bard, Druid, Monk, Necromancer. They did the Hole from 51-53, but the front was going green and deeper in, constant adds from rooftop mobs was too much of a pain in the ass; though I did get some nice loam encrusted gear and a few other of the zone generic drops. I tried going to Chardok, but never got past the first guardhouse; 3 attempts of carefully splitting and pacifying, and I always got adds on pulls, respawns, other bullshit. I was thoroughly unimpressed, and I have no idea how groups made that work on live (maybe careful mezzing from a bard or enchanter?). So then they went to Veksar, which is a zone I did on live a ton and generally find easy. A loop from entrance to Golems gives lots of shots at named mobs and plenty of mobs, and is decent exp; a bit better than Howling Stones.

Some of these zones drop seriously out of era gear or hotzone items; I'm starting to use them as substitutions for the Veeshan Peak 1.0 raid gear I can't get, and I'm being less strict about things than I initially intended.

Once all groups hit 60, I went to Hateplane B to get Tier 1 armor, epic pieces, and eventually move into Marsinger's gems. The zone was generally easy with 24 level 60's even in mediocre gear, since it was revamped to be a bit more designed for grouping in as opposed to raids. Everything is on raid recovery timer, and I want to check if that's true on live at some point since it feels odd to me. I spent a lot of time here getting ~4 AA per hour on lessons while watching TV. Abhorrent Dust and Hatebonedrake Bones we're the slowest tier 1 and 2 items for me. I got 50 out of 96 books when I first finished one of the classes T3 books (Caster) – I needed 1 priest Tier 3, 2 hybrid tier 3's, and all 4 of my melees hadn't found their Tier 3 books yet. Book 51 was my first dissertation of dark war.

My first rot was my 53rd book, a Concordance of Black Magic. By around 65 I was having lots of rots; I just need three Tier-3 melee books (still) and 1 Tier-3 hybrid book – I think I'm stopping at Tier 3 for most characters for the moment, since the attack/mana regen seems more beneficial than the bit of stats for Tier 4. By this point I'm pretty sick of HateplaneB, but on the bright side, I've got most of the epic pieces I need from it (still haven't seen rogues Martune Rapier).

I did two everfrost adventures, running all 4 groups at the same time, which was interesting and different, also configuring for group encounters as opposed to raid. I then did two Mistmoore adventures; with the Everfrost and Mistmoore, the first one took ~75 minutes, and the second took about 60 minutes to run all 4 groups through. My Rujark's we're both quick (55 minutes), but my Takish was garbage; 80 minutes. Too many casters, and a rooms we're generally more packed. Guk was fine. 2 nameds well within range. I was at 50AA on each character, and bought Run3, Regen3, Mystical Attuning 3, and general random utility stuff, staying away from “direct power” AA's and sticking with sort of like, weirder stuff; MGB, Divine Res, etcetera.

I farmed out Charasis keys and did a bit of plane of innovation while some groups we're farming Xalgoz – Innovation exp seemed substantially better than most other places I've been except possibly Sebilis. Then I went to Charasis and got all 24 characters their Echo's of Charasis. I stopped by Chardok to pick up 1 echo, then remembered how much I hate that zone and left. Then I worked on Sebilis keys for the entire group, killed Trakanon twice because he happened to be up. I did all 24 Sebilis echos; exp in Sebilis Juggs + Myconids was super fast, probably like 6-8 AA/hour without lesson.

Then I went back to Chardok, and farmed out my 24 echos. This took a little while, but I hated the zone less, and I collected all my appropriate epic 1.0 pieces while I was there, killing Royals 4 times. Chardok Royals were generally quite easy for 24 level 60 characters in Droga/Hate group Tier gear. The Echo of chardok is the hardest; the 2k AE + stun at the start would often kill whoever drew agro first.

By that time, I was at 100AA for each character, and after the first 50 (mostly weird utility) and spent the remaining 50 AA on Combat Agility 3, Combat Stability 3, and Natural Durability 6. I meant to do another set of 2 LdoN's each, but before I do that I wanted to do ChardokB, since I was already down there, to max out my faction for Chardok so I could do Spirit Wracked Cord on my warrior, plus collect Druushk quest pieces. I killed Korocust on my first attempt using Infusion and several staunches without CH chain set up. I put Korucust on tier 3 of the raid list, based on drops. At the end of the day, with Infusion, he's as easy as Vindi or easier. If the AE's land, he's way harder. His AE's represent a large portion of the difficulty of the fight. He has 300k life to Vindi's 180k, quads 760 to Vindis double 700, but he's slowable, so the DPS output ends up similar-ish. The second kill my CH chain got mangled and I lost 7 out of 24; 3 tanks, 1 cleric, 1 shaman, and both druids; my ranger and beserker ended up tanking ~40% of the fight. He procced an unresistable 1600 point DD that I didn't notice the first time that made his damage spikier. 3rd kill I just lost 2 tanks. 4th kill I remembered to use armor of experience and ended up doing him deathless for the first time. The kills went smooth from there, though I would occasionally lose a character on pulling, or a tank or two. When I maxxed out my Chardok Faction, I completed the Spirit Wracked Cord quest, which in my mind is one of the iconic kunark quests, and one of the first 100hp items available. In the process of going from maxed scowls to maxxed ally, I got 5 druushk jaws and tonnes of the other druushk items.

I cleared Plane of Fear for Bard epic pieces (and got a few other epic items on the way). Cazic Thule was up, so I did a full clear to kill him. At this point (level 60, 100 spent AA, group gear mostly), it took infusion/staunch/intensity/armor/and full burns to kill him, and it was somewhat close. The 4 loots really weren't worth the time or energy. Honestly I have a hard time saying Cazic would be worth it unless you can ping him, clear agro, pull and kill the train, then pull and clear Cazic. With 450k life and quadding for 600, he's definitely tougher than Korucust. I'm considering levelling just my bards to 63 for Psalm of Veeshan. It took 3 trips to fear to get my Amygdalan Tendrils. Fear is tedious; the Berserker epic piece spawned twice per trip and has stupid HP and an AE mez. There are dispelling and shadowstepping mobs. None of the loot is relevant except for epic pieces.

I did 4 more LdoN's of each type here, getting my characters to 150AA spent each. I tried collects, which I generally found to be about a few minutes faster, depending on zone; my Everfrost slaughter 50's took 42-45 minutes, but my collect 24's took 33-40 minutes. On the other hand, if a group got unlucky on the Rujark collect 20, I had some of them take 55 minutes, when the slaughter 54 I could do in 50 minutes. But I think in general, the collects averaged out a few minutes quicker.

Epics took me all over the world; here is a lengthy discussion of them below.

Epic 1.0 Reviews, in alphabetical order, not in order that I did them. Some of the later completed epics get viewed as easier as they are, because I picked up so many pieces along the way.

Bard: But in the end, I completed 4 Bard epics as my first 4 epics. In my opinion, the most relevant the longest, the proc isn't replaced until PoTime or Tacvi, and the focus effect doesn't start showing up commonly until later expansions and higher end gear and defiant (which I am not using on these 4 groups). Plus in the first few expansions, they loved throwing dispelling mobs at you, and proccing haste is useful – I'm thinking about farming Skyfire for pearlescent fragments soon. Of the camps, Phinigal was tough (30 kills for 4 backbones), but the rest were relatively chill. Running around was easy, the Drakes were easy (Nezekenzia has a 10% spawn chance but only a 1.2 minute respawn timer), Quag was easy, Drolvargs took a night, Fear took 3 trips, I had the red and white scales banked from a bunch of Vox and Naggy kills, and Trakanon was a push over except when he banished the first character to agro him, then chased them into the wall. Honestly the dragon scales would be a bottleneck if you were just trying to farm Gorenaire; I'm glad I stopped for Vox and Naggy.

Difficulty: 3/5. Quality: 11/10 - I am in Plane of Time; my bards are still offhanding their Epic 1.0 for the proc (mainhanding their Epic 1.5)

Beastlord: This epic is easy to get; the vast majority of the fights are triggered, and the few camps are quick and easy. I think I blew it out in a few hours start to finish. The result is remarkably not good. 13/22 weapons were barely better than bazaar gear even in Luclin. The slow proc is a slight improvement on beastlord slow, 55% instead of Sha's Advantages 50%...until 1 expansion later when Sha's Revenge gets beastlords 65% slow. Immediately went in my bags.

Difficulty: 1/5. Quality: 1/10

Beserker: Another easy 1.0 epic, it's got a few slightly tougher than the Beastlord epic camps, and is otherwise just triggered fights and crafting Alchemy, which took a few hours. The result, however, is noticeably better than other epic 1.0's, probably because it came out later, and no group content produced a better 2 hander for me yet, so my Berserker is actually using it. In Era, it is better than a Windblade, which I recall going for 5-10kpp on live. This will actually get use until late Velious/Early Luclin.

Difficulty: 1/5. Quality: 5/10

Cleric: 4 cleric epics were the second set of epics I did. This epic really has 3 bad camps; Bergurgle, Gimblox, and the Pealescent Shards. I feel like 1 or 2 cleric 1.0's wouldn't have felt bad, but blowing out 4, especially the 16 Pearlescent shards, felt brutal. 2 of the 4 clerics used the epic as a stat stick, 2 of the 4 already had better (Bloodgill Staff + Soulsip Sceptre), but the click on these is great and stays great for numerous expansions. Apparently clerics eventually get a level 70AA that gives them a replacement to this ability.

Difficulty: 3/5. Quality: 10/10

Druid: This epic was filled with awful camps and numerous lengthy run around turn ins as well; at least half of the tainted took a few hours; the foraging took quite a while as well. None of the raid content was tough, but it really seemed to assume you would hit a bunch of these mobs quad kiting while levelling (and calling in help once the much higher level tainted/corrupted spawned?). Or just port to and check random spots, since the zones would actually have people passing through and killing in them, which didn't happen on PEQ at all. Worse, had to fix faction with the Muffins quest to talk to Thelin to start the quest, then of course Bat Wings to talk to the artifact dude at Timorous Deep Chess Board.

The result is solid. The clicky is a stacking dot, so that's good, and the stats are usable as a stat stick until late Velious raid content. But I don't remember hearing people consider this as bad as the mage epic on live, and it definitely felt that way – maybe because on live the raid content was harder to accomplish and group content more easy, whereas here it almost feels reverse; group camps are tedious and raid camps are fun.

Difficulty: 5/5. Quality: 7/10

Enchanter: This was a long and difficult epic for an effect that was obsolete before I got it, and arguably obsolete in Kunark even; Visions of Grandeur offers attack and still enough haste to reach the haste cap, and by Luclin group haste spells are obviously better. The entire test of charm was tedious camps; most notably City of Mist, where my melee characters slowly walked themselves off the edge and my magician was doing another camp, so my raid force slowly got whittled down to just casters and a tank. Most of the raid targets I had hit incidentally going for other epics, and none of it was super difficult. I did use this as a stat stick for a while though, so it has some value.

Difficulty: 4/5. Quality: 3/10

Magician: One of the most iconic difficult epics. A lot of tedious and greened out camps; Najena alone took several hours. The lava elemental took several hours. Running around and grabbing all the little pieces for the Solusek Ro quests took a while too. Plus you have to make it to Isle 7 of plane of air – my first clear of Plane of Air didn't even drop the helm. Quillmane, which is supposed to be legendarily difficult, I got twice before I got Brother Qwinn once (a mob that should have been easy to spawn but was instead very difficult).

The result is good, though. The pet holds up definitely until Luclin, though the Planes of Power pets quickly supercede it. On the downside, E3 doesn't know how to resummon the pet, so I ended up not using it.

Difficulty: 5/5. Quality: 8/10

Monk: Brother Qwinn is a 10% spawn on 20ish place holders and a 20% spawn on another 10ish, so he should have been easy to find up...it took me 4 hours of farming Karana to get him once, luckily he dropped the robe the first time. (And I got Quillmane twice in that time). If you got that piece quicker, the monk epic would be easy. The metal pipes were pretty quick, Immortals you get during cleric epics, and the rest is triggered fights.

They're a glove slot item, and they're solid. The clicky also offers 40 pts of attack that gets superceded later by ranger and beastlord buffs, but they're wearable probably straight through until Luclin.

Difficulty: 2/5. Quality: 7/10

Necromancer: The chardok piece I got while farming echos. Sky I got done while doing Mage/Warrior. Eye of Innorruk is easy, and I bought the Slime Blood for 20kpp. (my second trade). Tragically, since the dot is a snare, it doesn't stack as well as Shaman/Druid epics, but it's usable for the moment and a decent sized mana free dot.

Difficulty: 1/5. Quality: 6/10

Paladin: Going in, I expected this to be an awful epic, with all the subquests and multiple parts, but in a lot of ways none of the camps were bad. Ghoulbane has a 100% drop chance from an always up mob; Soulfire took a couple hours; Miragul was pretty quick, which got me to Fiery Defender. I had Tainted Darksteel from previous raids, and all the little fetch quests were pretty quick. There was one faction issue which wasn't hard to sort out – luckily I had hundreds of bone chips stocked.

The final result is usable in relation to other group content dropped two handers I had, so that's kinda impressive actually. It obviously gets swiftly eclipsed in Velious.

Difficulty: 2/5. Quality: 4/10

Ranger: The forages actually took me in the vicinity of 5-6 hours for ranger + 2 druids – way longer than I expected. There are a lot of chores in this epic for sure. Jade reaver is easy, Triggered Venril Sathir is easy, Sphere from Isle 4 of Sky is easy, and shattered emerald was gained when I farmed out 24 marsinger tier 3's. Altogether, the only hard part of this epic felt like the foraging and the chores...which was plenty to make it feel difficult.

Group content provides way better 1 handers than 2 handers; all the people dual wielding immediately bagged their epics, and ranger is no different. I've a 14/20 in the mainhand from Korucust, and a 13/19 in the offhand from Plane of Hate minis. Droga also drops 12/19 and 13/20 weapons too, all of which vastly eclipse the ranger epic. The slow proc is cool for solo/small group stuff; on live I played a ranger that duoed with a cleric a fair bit and procced slow, so it was neat to do this epic again – on live it felt way harder. I also had a lot of faction issues during the ranger epic, in 3 different places, having to stop and (farm muffins, farm bat wings, and farm crushbone).

Difficulty: 3/5. Quality: 2/10

Rogue: The pick pockets were a bit of a hassle. The Jagged Diamond Dagger dropping during the epic makes it way easier; if General V`Ghera drops a Cazic Quill then the epic is really quick and easy. As it was, farming bard epics got me the kedge robe, levelling in guk got me a SMR, and the rest was pretty easy.

The General V`Ghera fight itself...presumably I was supposed to split that but I really didn't see it coming. It was definitely the closest I got to having my full 24 box wipe in this tier, pulling all the dark elves at once.

The rogue epic is arguably better than a Gomdurig, so I'm using it for a bit, but it'll get eclipsed by Velious raid loot.

Difficulty: 1 or 2/5 Quality: 4/10

Shadowknight: I had most of the pieces before I even started, but getting the Soul Blade from the Fear Golems was a nightmare – I don't totally understand why people love amulets of necropotence and skeleton illusion, especially when there are so many other ways to gain illusions, even illusions with stat bonuses/procs, like the halloween quests and enchanters. Finally, someone helped me get it, and I was off on my final epic 1.0. The opening pre-quests with Sol Ro armor were awful and took a couple hours on their own. The weapon is of course, hideously dated; though a life leech dot and recourse is cool.

Difficulty: 3.5/5 (that damned PoFear piece and the Sol Ro questing). Quality: 2/10

Shaman: The test of patience...I expected to take 5-10 minutes, instead of 1.5 hours. That was brutal. I kept thinking the script broke. The City of Mist, Hole, and Plane of Fear stuff I pretty much all nailed pretty quickly and while enroute to other things. Altogether, this epic felt quick and easy.

It's a wearable stat-stick with a stacking clicky dot; that keeps value (especially solo, but also in groups) for ages; probably time/GoD era is when medding for 9 seconds instead of casting produces more value?

Difficulty: 2 (just for the patience) / 5. Quality: 7/10

Warrior: Green Dragon Scales took a bit of hunting; people do look for Severilous. My only PoFear Golem kill got me a ball of everliving Golem (plus a child's tear), so that worked well. Most of the other little pieces themselves were pretty quick/or while doing something else, and none of them were particularly hard to find. Getting the rebreathers crafted took ~20kpp and a couple of hours.

The epic, unfortunately, doesn't stand up long at all. Group content from PoP onwards quickly eclipses it, with Droga, Veksar, and Plane of HateB all offering similar or better weapons for single groups, and in terms of raid content, the Blade of Carnage in some ways feels like a more iconic warrior item than the warrior epic, though maybe that's because I hit level 60 during velious and not Kunark when originally playing.

Difficulty: 3/5. Quality: 2/10

Wizard: I wanted to like this epic. It generally felt easy – a bit of running around, a triggered fight in fear, a couple Venril Sathir kills, and already having the Phinigal staffs from doing the bard portions, but I am hugely disappointed that the mana regen portion of the rune is on the beastlord mana regen line, meaning that as soon as Luclin comes out, the epic is basically worthless. Since I already have a beastlord, that's the case. The stats are usable for a bit, but will be eclipsed by Velious. In Era, it probably counted as pretty good.

Difficulty: 1/5. Quality: 3/10

In summary of the Epics 1.0's, the best for difficulty to quality ratio in my opinion are cleric and bard.

Stage 1 (~Kunark) – Epic 1.0's, level 60, 50 aa (mostly junk; runspeed, buff slots) -- I've added Lodizal (wasn't listed at all) and changed tiering for Plane of Fear: Cazic Thule himself drops better loot than the rest of this tier, and is tougher, with 450k life and quadding for up to 600; the rest of these have 32-50k life and tend to double-triple hit instead of quad. Wuoshi I tiered down a tier for similar reasons.

These mobs were easy to find up.

Chardok Royals: Prince, Queen, King.-- 4 sets, was easy.
Cobalt Scar: Kelorek`Dar – 2 kills, super easy.
Dreadlands: Gorenaire – Killed 3 times; the AE slow with a decent sized resist modifier made her slower to kill than other kunark dragons, but generally easy.
Emerald Jungle: Severilous --- 4 kills – Consistently went down easily
Karnor's Castle: Venril Sathir --- I did one kill with just 12 using infusion, and 6-7 kills with 24. Was easy with 24, though sometimes a life-tap proc spike would kill a tank.
Old Sebilis: Trakanon --- 6-7 kills. The only issues I had was when he banished the first character to aggro, then ran after them instead of attacking the rest of the raid.
Skyfire Mountains: Talendor – 4 kills, consistently went down easily.
Timorous Deep: Faydedar – 2 kills, super easy.
Wakening Land: Wuoshi – 2-3 kills, easy, no interesting loot.
Plane of Fear without Cazic Thule --- Clearing the plane was tedious and no worthwhile loot dropped. I went here several times for Bard and Wizard epics.
Iceclad Ocean: Lodizal --- Did like, 15-20 kills for EB items. Was easy every time.

Standouts in positive terms: Trakanon BP's (Shaman's in particular). Standout in a negative terms; clearing plane of fear. The Berserker epic mob in particular slows things down.

While doing the Epic 1.0's, I killed the Guardian of the Seal in the Hole twice (easy-ish), and Klandicar once (while completing weight of the elements). Klandicar was easier than Von, who happened to agro me and I thought would be no big deal, until he quadruple procced a 1300 point DD across my entire bunched up raid.

 

Stage 2 raids and keying

After completing all the Epic 1.0's except for Shadowknight, because I can't find the Plane of Fear mobs up, I did a bunch of random Tier 2-3 raiding. See below. While many encounters were easy, I had trouble with Plane of Growth, Avatar of War, The Burrower Beast, and Temple of Veeshan, so after doing many encounters 2-5 times, I levelled everyone to 61, got them all to 200 AA (which let me get another tier of defensive AA's, plus some of the PoP burns), then essence emeralded everyone back down to level 60. I finished up 10 of each LdoN, and checked out various zones on my “do at level 60 list”; Sol C (wiped to Culthodor, but didn't really expect to win).

I worked on VT shards, emp keys, ST keys, Coldain Ring during this time too (which unfortunately was bugged). All the group content was totally easy with a couple hundred aas. Remarkably, some of the raids stayed difficult for 24 characters with 200AA at level 60, maybe in part because of my own lack of skill. By the time I finished 24 emp keys and VT shards and ST keys, I had my characters at 61 and 300AA, which was basically maxxed available AA (except shitty general AA) for all of them except for the hybrid tanks and the mage (who had more available AA at a lower level than other classes).

The Kael raids had a lot of competition and were somewhat hard to find up. A lot of other stuff was relatively easy to find up.

24 Emp keys wasn't actually nearly as bad as I thought. The insignias took a night, the taskmaster pouches were easy, and the commanders were easy to kill while passing back and forth to various raids. 24 chars were of VT shards were worse than I expected. Fungus Grove and Sun Revenants, things I remembered being relatively chill on live, were awful to on 24. So was Seru/Katta, surprisingly. Honestly, all the shards took a remarkable amount of time, altogether. I'm not surprised people skip VT on PEQ. When I did eventually go and raid Vex Thal on PEQ, it took forever and was no fun.

I'm working on clearing off Tier 2 Raids, doing my coldain rings. I kill Tiorpat Tornwing in Ruined City of Dranik; this mob is very easy for the VT/earlyEP level loot he drops ---> I would eventually like to get my entire box Tier 2 Breastplates for the clickies, even though it seems like this will take roughly 6 months of regular kills; and they can't use his regular loot since it's required level 63. Tunare is the last thing I have to do in Tier 2, plus shawl and ringwar, but also idly working on Emp weapons, Seru weapons, and tradeskills. It's hard to motivate sitting down to clear Plane of Growth since last time it didn't go well, and it looks like 2-3 hours + for 4 decent loots, which is a janky time ratio.

I tried Tunare; 4 hours of clearing, got stuck on the mobs with the AE hard to resist silence (it even landed on a level 70 who showed up to help with 500 resists), then the Tunare attemped wiped because too many trash mobs were hidden around the zone; you really do have to track them all down, or ping Tunare, peel off trash, feign, use her to pull...but I was out of time by then. Tried the Plane of Mischief mini events, but they aren't programmed on PEQ. I attempted the PoNightmare Hedge event, but when six spawned, I didn't use an AE agro ability and Thelin got ate. I'll try again at some point and use AE taunt + memblur.

I got kinda stuck around level 61 + Tier 2-3 raids; I could do most but not all, and I had a bunch of small tedious things that I wanted to do completionist style that were hard to motivate, including Seru Bane weapons, Emp Bane weapons, Coldain Shawl 8, Coldain Ring 10 (which didn't even work, as it turns out), the final Epic 1.0 (SK). Then I bought a house IRL, and that totally messed things up. I had the clever idea of camping near Tiorpat Tornwing so I could continue kills while busy with house stuff, logging in once a day, but after 6 weeks of never seeing him up, I concluded I simply wasn't competitve enough with my existing schedule to kill him. So instead I did my VT turn ins (which took like, a week? I swear on live they were 100% chance to spawn). SK epic 1.0 got completed here; it wasn't too bad, though I hate the Hole.

Stage 2 (~Velious): Done at 60-61, with 100-200-300AA spent. Generally noted when it took more AA's/levels to do

I removed Wuoshi from this tier and put him up one tier. I added the Iceclad Ocean Shawl 8 ring event, and The Great Divide, Ringwar 10. The Ringwar I think probably requires multiple human teams, and the loot for the Shawl 8 material is a bit weak for this tier, but I included it for completeness sake.

There was definitely some competition for Tormax, and people killed Zlandicar a remarkable amount too. I even saw West Wing down once when I went there to kill it, and the Western Wastes Dragons were often dead in passing.

Dragon Necropolis: Zlandicar --- 1 kill, easy. Talisman good for twinks.
Icewell Keep: Dain Frostreaver IV –- Couldn't be bothered. Only the belt is any good (requires factioning)
Kael Drakkel: Derakor the Vindicator --- 20 kills+, 180k life, doubles for 700, unslowable; --- BP is good for those who can wear it, boots are okay. Trivially easy.
Kael Drakkel: King Tormax --- 10 kills+. 450k life, quads for 600, unslowable. 1st kill; lost cleric on pull, tank on enrage, no CH chain, otherwise easy.
Plane of Growth: Tunare --- Couldn't even clear PoGrowth; kept accidentally agroing the wandering treants. Not sure I'm patient enough for this.

Don't attempt again until 65; AE silence mobs are awful, 1 million life trash mobs are awful; I guess if you've got a lot of live humans you can kite this, but clearing the plane to kill Tunare is just brutal. Even doing at 65 was obnoxious; first I tried pinging tunare with bards under divine aura (because she roots otherwise) and pulling some of the train that came when she summoned allies, but I kept getting a few too many mobs and wiping. So instead I tracked the zone down; at 65 it still took 2.5 hours, could probably get it down to 2 hours. Nature's Melody is a stacking AC buff but it's probably not worth the buff slot. There is also a belt with an AC/DS buff for tanks, but I didn't get it.

Skyshrine: Lord Yelinak ---> 1 kill, mostly uninteresting loot. Pain to get to, hard to kill (500k life, quads 800 unslowable but DPS feels lower for some reason, AE fling slows down the fight a lot though), and the loot is terrible.

Sleeper's Tomb ---> Keying was annoying and took a long time, since people kill the dragons and Kael stuff decently often. Master of the Guard was probably the hardest encounter, and dropped no loot. Arbiter and Progenitor were easy. The dragons weren't bad either; Zeixish-Kar had bigger melee DPS and ate some tanks on my first attempt, which was a little tricky but still not bad with divine resses available, and Kildrukaun has an unresistable 50% slow and 1kDD ae which was a little rough. One clear more or less got me the avatar weapons I wanted though – a few bards could use one, so I did a second run – Zeixish-Kar I failed to kill twice, getting to 20% and 5%, but the other three dragons went down pretty easy at 61 with 300AA, and I got my bards their weapons. Dragons had ~400k life and quadded for 1kish, just below.

Temple of Veeshan: Halls of Testing, Dozekar the Cursed – Couldn't be bothered to attempt.
Temple of Veeshan: West Wing -Telk --- 3 kills. Easy, though the west wing is a pain in the ass. Good helm/necklace.
Temple of Veeshan: West Wing – Gozz, --- 3 kills. Easy, though west wing is pain in the ass. Good cloak.
Temple of Veeshan: West Wing -Lendinari the Keeper --- 1 kill; it took me a while to figure out the pull. Definitely the toughest of the west wing. You can use a Shadowknight with Divine aura or a monk with Bestow Divine Aura to pull trash while being immune to the full life Call of the Zero, then rush the dragons solo. Works for NTOV stuff too.
Velketor's Labyrinth: Velketor the Sorcerer --- 4-5 kills. 200k life, doubles for 850k. pain in the ass to get to. Pushover. None of the loot is inspiring.
Velketor's Labyrinth: Lord Bob. --- 1 kill. 150k life, triples for 450, easy. Monk/Bst tunic is okay.
Western Wastes: Klandicar --- 5+ kills, was easier than Von, a random roaming dragon.
Western Wastes: Sontalak --- 5+ kills, 1st went okay, 2nd was a mess; procced too many 1000pt DD's and ate through my tanks. 3rd was easy again.
Western Wastes: Melalfin --- 10 kills+ easy (Tier 1 loot, but in the area)

The Great Divide: Ringwar 10 – Coldain Ring Quests are broken
Iceclad Ocean: Shawl 8 – Maybe should be tier 1 – eventually I might muster the will to do this on PEQ.

Positive Standouts in this tier: Vindi; easy, fast respawn, good BP. Tormax loot is excellent too. And I used the Avatar weapons on swaps for ages.
Negative standouts in this tier: Plane of Growth. Just brutal.

 

Stage 3 raids, and leveling to 65


Stage 3 (~Avatar of War/NTOV): Done at 60-61 with 100-300AA. On this Tier I added a lot of stuff based on loot drops; items tend to be on the 50-90hp/mana range. Cazic Thule from Plane of Fear got added to this tier.

There was a remarkable amount of competition for stuff on this tier; Avatar of War, Shei Vinitras, and Tiorpat Tornwing were very hard to find up, Ssra was moderately hard to find up, and I saw people killing Evolved Burrower, the rest of Akheva, NtoV...most non-triggered raids on this list I looked for at least once to find they weren't up.

Acrylia Caverns: Khati Sha the Twisted ---> Event is broken on PEQ
Plane of Mischief: The hidden Jester: 50hp/mana items ---> Not programmed.
Plane of Mischief: Winning at Chess, Black and White: 50hp/mana items – Not programmed
Acrylia Caverns: Evolved Burrower: 14+ kills, easy. Mana regen clicky, 100hp belt
Grieg's End: Grieg Veneficus --- 1 kill, easy (AE 30 minute snare with 72 curse counters? Not interested in that), no inspiring loot.
Grieg's End: Servitor of Luclin – 1 kill, easy, no good loot
Akheva Ruins: The Itraer Vius – 8 kills+, Decent weapons, mana regen items.
Akheva Ruins: Shei Vinitras --- First Shei attempt at 61 and 300 AA's was a huge mess. Got too many adds for some reason and wasn't ready for the instant agro. On the second attempt at 65 with 350-400AA's I got it; I had a bard killed instead of my main tank, which let me kill the 7 adds that spawned. Unfortunately, I lost my warrior and his corpse wasn't rezzable for some reason – accepted a rez while zoning, maybe? The fight was long, weird and awkward with death touches and respawning adds...might be the hardest thing on this tier, on par with Avatar of War and Vulak. I have no idea why people kill this so much? Tradeskill items? The Shadowsong cloak?
Akheva Ruins: The Insanity Crawler – 1 kill, easy. No interesting loot.
Akheva Ruins: The Va'dyn – 8 kills+, easy. Bard weapon. Not much else. Killed on the way past.
Kael Drakkel: The Avatar of War --- Statue and Idol weren't much harder than vindi or tormax. 5 kills each. My first AoW kill I died at 60%; wasn't using a CH chain. Need to find a robust macro. Second attempt; got him to 5% life. . 3rd time killed with someone, 4th and 5th times didn't have time to attempt AoW, so didn't try. When I re-tried at 65 with 350-400 AA spent, it was easy-ish. Tank still died at 20% when defensive went down because the CH chain broke, but SK grabbed agro and stayed up long enough to kill it. Seriously probably the toughest fight on this list. 2nd attempt at 65 was flawless, and I got 4-5 kills in.
Ssraeshza Temple: Arch Lich Rhag`Zadune – 6 kills. The AE Fling and stun is very nasty. When boxing, I think this is the hardest of the Ssra raids aside from emp, consistently requiring staunching and most of my vet AA's at 61/300, whereas the rest of the raids are pretty straight forward at 61/300.
Ssraeshza Temple: High Priest of Ssraeshza ---> 8 kill, wasn't too bad actually. Despite quadding for 700, his DPS seemed unusually low – casting as well, perhaps, taking priority.
Ssraeshza Temple: Rhag 1 ---> 6 kill, easy. Good caster shield, otherwise junk
Ssraeshza Temple: Rhag 2 ---> 6 kill, easy. Mediocre gear.
Ssraeshza Temple: Xerkzeh the Creator --- > 9 kills, easy. Negligible DPS once slowed; remove greater curse spam on the main tank makes healing through easy. Takes forever though. This was actually on Tier 4...but is easier, so I tiered down a tier. The loot is a little better on this tier on average though.
Ssraeshza Temple: A Glyphed Servant ---> 8 kills, easy.
Ssraeshza Temple: Vyzdrah the Exiled ---> 8 kills, easy despite deathtouch
Ssraeshza Temple: Vyzdrah the Cursed ---> 6 kills. Instant wipe the first attempt. Second attempt got it; infusion to resist AE's + charm, armor and CH chain to start, then rotating clerics Ching once slowed. 3rd attempt wiped again; definitely at the edge of my ability at 60 with 200AA. Reattempted a few times at 61/300 and was pretty easy with infusion to resist the charm, and was really easy at 65/350-400. Was on Tier 4, but I tiered down a tier, since it is easier than most of the Tier 4 content; the loot is pretty good for this tier.
Ssraeshza Temple: Blood of Ssra ---> 3 kills. On live it was probably a crime to kill blood with no intention of killing Emp, but I did it twice. It was an easy kill at 61 with 300AA., burning it down, ninja looting, and then wiping to the respawning emp snakes.
Plane of Innovation: Xanamech Nezmirthafen ---> 5 kills, easy with infusion, easy without.
Plane of Innovation: Manaetic Prototypes ---> 10 kills. Loot pinyatas, super easy, and easy to find up – 24 hour spawn timer.
Umbral Plains: Rumblecrush ---> 1 kill, easy. Good BP's
Umbral Plains: Doomshade ---> 1 kill; spawning is hard; there is so much agro in the area. You easily end up fighting 20-30 mobs. Killing doomshade himself is easy enough. His loot is not particularly good for his difficulty.
Veksar: Garudon: 60-90hp/mana items: --- 3 kills, easy.
The Deep: Thought Horror Overfiend; 6 kills, easy, except the slow. 25-50hp/mana items ---> haste belt (30%), caster beastlord clicky, monk/beast weapon
The Hole: Guardian of the Seal (50-85hp/mana items) --- 3 kills; with 125k life, the only challenge is his AE. Guides say to use levitate, but it can't be cast in the hole.
ChardokB: Korucust: 85hp/mana items --- 16 kills, easy if you resist his AE's; dps is low.
Cazic Thule (Plane of Fear) – 100hp/mana items. --- 2 kills; a long tough fight with an unresistable AE knockback and big life pool, but damage output is low. Clearing PoFear is probably not worth the handful of loots.
Crypt of Nadox: Innoruk: 50hp/mana items. ---> 1 kill, easy/push over.
Crypt of Nadox: Luggald Broodmother: 50hp/mana items.---> 1 kill, Easy/push over
Hates Fury: Captain Krasnok: 75hp/mana items. --- 1 kill; the raid is easy. My god hates Fury is awful; spawning the mobs and getting the pieces takes forever, and nothing else is super interesting.
Temple of Veeshan: North Wing ---> 1 attempt, wipe on rampage drakes (6) just to left of entrance. 2nd attempt; wipe on trying to rush Aaryoner. Once I figured out that you can use Divine Aura type abilities to block Call of the Zero and split pulls, I got into NtoV and did most of a full clear. The raid is a slow, long slog; the Dragons weren't hard, though I had a wipe to getting 3 flurry drakes in camp at once. Also had to evac on Vyemm due to him grav-fluxing all my clerics into Lava. I got a Vyemm kill using Vet AA's, but it was tough and definitely brutal. I got Vulak to 50% when my main tank went down, and it was a swift wipe from there. The biggest NtoV disappointment is the loot; man did it not date well. There is other content from this era that offers better loot easier, like Sleepers Tomb and King Tormax/Vindi in Kael, and a lot of the Luclin raids swiftly offer better items. By this era, group gear from revamped dungeons eclipses NtoV raid gear.
I returned at 65 with 350-400AA spent and Vulak was easy; Vyemm was still a royal pain in the ass though. The Vulak loot was decent though.

Ikatiar: SK/necro cloak.
Eashan: Cloak, weapons.
Aaryoner: Reapers ring is the only interesting item
Cekanar: Blackstar, Mace of Night
Dagarn: No interesting loot
Jorlleag: Sprinkler of the Spirits is okay
Mirenalla: The tradable mithril stuff is cool
Nevedaria: Cloak of Thorns (DS buff on Icicle Aura line)
Feshlak: Chestplate of Fiery Might (DS on Frostreaver's Blessing/Call of Rathe/Earth line), Staff of Silent Star
Koi`doken: Siren Song, Dagger of Seas (ac/agi/haste, only conflicts with nature's melody from tunare)
Vyemm: The awful one – Decent gloves
Sevelak: Garbage
Vulak: Good loot, hard to kill
Zlexak:Meh

Planes of Power: Auliffe Chaoswind: 250k life, quads 850, 800pt AE --- 2 kills, Easy except getting there and not falling off the platforms.
Planes of Power: Brynju Thunderclap: 350k life, quads 850, 1k and 1.5k Aes --- 3 kills, Easy
Planes of Power: Eindride Icestorm: 350k life, quads 900, 500pt and 600pt Aes --- 3 kills, Easy
Planes of Power: Kuanbyr Hailstorm: 320k life, quads 850, 1.5k and 400pt Aes --- 3 kills, Easy
Plane of Nightmare: Mujaki the Devourer: Did once, Slow event, I accidentally let 7 mobs past before I found my tagging strategy, which made splitting the pull a bit hard. Got Mujaki + 4 mobs, which ended up not being too bad at 61 with 300aa spent. Loot is pretty good, but the event feeling so slow makes it just not really worth it.
Harbinger's Spire: Avatar of Light and Guardian of the Beacon: Both mobs have low health and are pretty easy, drop a single attunable item in the 75-100 hp/mana range. You can trigger each mob up to 8 times each, which makes it a good 2ish hour raid for 16 good items at this tier. I ripped through it at 65 once and it took about 30 minutes. I went through this raid 3-4 times.
Tiorpat Tornwing is killable as easily as this tier; in general I'd describe as easier than many of the raids above. His loot is on par with Tier 5; Vex Thal/early elemental loot. While Gates of Discord added raids are hard, he is pretty darn easy. The add spawn seems irregular, and sometimes requires burns to deal with, but his overall damage output isn't immense. Lots of competition for him though. 5-6 kills at this tier, and then probably 100's of kills over the course of playing here.
The Deep: The Burrower Beast; 50-100hp/mana items. --- Got to 15% with CH chain at 61 with 300aa, tried again at 65 with 350-400 AA spent and was super easy. 1 kill.
Bloodfields Elite Dragorn Jakiska: This is an event that was probably easier not boxing – bots tend to chase after the Dragorn instead of pausing to deal with the adds. I got it at 65 with 350-400 aa spent, but the loot isn't particularly inspiring at that point, and it's a hassle of an event. 1 kill
Cazic Thule: Ring of Slime – 50-100hp/mana items – I never did these events.
Cazic Thule: Horror Construct – 50-100hp/mana items– I never did these events.
Cazic Thule: Ring of Fear: 50-100hp/mana items.– I finally did this around Tier 6; Elemental planes, when passing through for the Ranger Epic 1.5. With level 70 (only 65 spells), 550ish AA, and 16 epic 1.5's, this was a long slow slog; lots of high hit point mobs. The whole event was an hour of straight grinding; I basically always had mobs up, though they had low DPS so they weren't super dangerous. This is probably substantially more difficult than anything else on this tier – the loot is Min level 51 and tradable, so kinda good for twinking.

Positive Standouts: Most of the easy Ssra Raids - fast, easy, great loot. Tiorpat Tornwing for Tier1 OoW BP's.
Negative Standouts: NToV. A long slog for loot that doesn't really stand up.

 

Stage 4-5 and the Quest to 65

I've got a few bits and pieces to finish off in Tier 2 raids (Tunare re-attempt, Coldain Ring is Broken, Coldain Shawl) and Tier 3 raids (Khati Sha is broken, Shei, Burrower Beast, NTOV, Avatar of War need more attempts, Cazic Thule raids), but I'm levelling to 65 + 400 AA because I'm sick of being at 61 and stuck in one place. Notes on the raids mostly are about where I did them in the notation, and also at the end. For a while I was diligently recording number of kills, but that got less diligent over time. I did 61 (close to 62) to start of 63 in a single lesson in Crypt of Decay – which was fun crawling around as on live I doubt I ever got past the entrance. CoD seems to be camped sometimes, so I headed to Storms (clicking in was awful, exp seemed about the same?) then Bastion of Thunder once everyone was 63 for 63 to 65 (which seemed like good exp and it's just a fun zone; I spent so much time here on live).

I'm going to do a big zone exp test here; my guys are in group-tier 2-3 raid gear and have 300 AA spent each. I exp with a single group grouped, and everyone else ungrouped. Once everyone is 65, big exp/zone test.

I also did a bunch of Tier 4-5 raids (listed below) and cleaned up some of my remaining tier 2-3 raids. The raids generally were remarkably not hard for 24 level 65 characters with 350-400 AA spent.

I got a little stuck cleaning up my last tier 3-4 raids and working on tier 5 stuff; I had a very difficult time with hedge; even spreading and sitting my guys didn't get enough agro on several random attempts and resulted in Thelin dying. I couldn't find Seru up – I'm shocked someone is camping him. I didn't have enough steady play time to sit and clear NtoV for a vulak attempt. I couldn't find Emperor Ssra to make an attempt. I did the Saryrn key which was terrible; 2 of the pieces happened fast but the other two took 3-4 hours of boring clearing.

Sebilis Juggs/Spores: 11-12aa/30 minute lesson
Sebilis Top Half: 10-11 aa/30 minute lesson, more obnoxious pulling/roaming.
Bastion of Thunder: 9-10 aa/30 minute lesson - water-fire-earth, air is awful
Crypt of Decay: 8-10 aa/30 minutes lesson - regroup and evac after clearing
Hate's Fury: 8-9 aa/30 minutes, portals are obnoxious and weird clear path with backtracking
HoHonor: 8-9 aa/30 minutes – density felt worse than BoT.
Tactics: 7aa/30 minutes – Cleared pit + all the minis in 30 minutes.
Infected Paw: 6-7aa/30 minutes --- Wiped as well from wall agro/ledge agro. Has unique loot though; rogue/ber frenzy/backstab mod items.
Plane of Valor: Absolutely bad. Not enough mobs. 6 aa/30 minutes lesson?
Plane of Storms, Desert: Too far apart. 6 aa/30 minutes lesson.

I did Sewers 1 in here, which my god was such a slog. Even running 4 groups at once, it was a slog. Lots of high HP monsters with a decent chunk of damage and multiple pulls and mobs hiding everywhere. Did a bunch of random killing through Omens of War Zones I didn't know like Noble's Causeway and Walls of Slaughter. Tried to do Murkglider Queen but couldn't get the pull done during the 16 minute respawn timer. I attempted Emp, got him to 59%; same with Rallos Zek; so I think I need something to drastically increase my DPS. I was going to head to Paw for cleave 2 / ferocity 2 items, but than I realized it's basically as quick to get the Tier 2 augment versions from Omens of War, so I started to farm for that instead. Howlite (strikethrough) is 2.5% on 40 mobs in Noble's Causeway, so that's one per 1 hour so. I got 6 howlite, I bought a bunch of augments; I bought a few other things, and did 2 days of farming and tradeskilling. I farmed Kyvs in Dranik for Dust of Decay, and I farmed Girplans in Harbingers for the Trean flies. I did Jewelcrafting and bought hundreds of Blue diamonds from vendors in Guildlobby, PoK, Tranquility, and I did Alchemy and farmed Sirens grotto, Crypt of Decay, and bought a bunch of nodding blue lillies. I collected all my magnetized and worked on my smithing, and it turns out the magnetized armor upgraded a bunch of my characters slots still, if barely. Many were still wearing Kylong Darkmail Gloves, and the Magnetic Gauntlets were an upgrade. Boots were an upgrade for one bard. Helms weren't an upgrade, since Kael drops a couple good Helms and I did a lot of Kael. Arms I only made 5 of and I should have made more; they were an upgrade for Paladin, all 4 clerics, and chances are the bards would use them too. BP's upgraded all 4 clerics. Legs upgraded several characters and I definitely could have used more. Bracers upgraded clerics and I definitely needed more of those, two.

I ended up with 6 Cleave 2 howlites, 4 Ferocity 2 DS augs, and 2 Ferocity 2 Stun Resist augs; which went to Rogue-Ber-Monk-Bst-Ranger- one bard. 3 bards + Pal/War/SK still need the upgrades, but I might need to pause this for a minute or I'll lose my mind. Groups hit 400AA each around here, with the primary/lead group being at 475aa; I'm not diligent about keeping them all at the exact same spot.

I got Halls of Honor Trials, which were easy with 2 other live players, and killed Saryrn, which was hard. Did a full clear of Ssra less emperor, and farmed around in random OoW zones for a while to finish another set of augments, which included 3 * Tier 3 augments. Everyone now has cleave 2+ferocity 2, except the Paladin and SK which didn't get Ferocity 2 (since I was short augments and I want to put them on at least non-stat, non-resist augments, since those are already maxed out).

I'm a little short on raids to do to finish off Tiers 4-5, and they're hard raids to find up. Sol Ro I can't access until I get Terris Thule and Mithaniel Marr, both of which I've checked for over 3 days with no luck. Vex Thal I can't do until I get Emp, which is tough to find up, though now that I have cleave and ferocity I'd love to take another attempt, as with RZ. Seru click up was broken for ages. I'd really like to clear Vex Thal once before I start doing Elemental tier content, so I might start working on my BIC 1-4 or epic 1.5's in the meantime. Did Sewers 2, which was way easier than Sewers 1. I tried Sewers 3 and failed; there was an underwater room in the middle of the zone with a mix of see invis and not see-invis mobs that had to be cleared through, and had like, 8-10 mobs swimming around in a mess...each group made attempts at pulls and got smushed, bad. I'm not 100% sure that I'll be able to complete Sewer 3, and I might have to go the Smith Rondo route for Vxed, Tipt, and Kod`Taz access. I tried a second time on Sewers 3 and yeah, no, that middle thing is a mess. I ended up getting helped through Smith Rondo. I think you could do Sewers 3 with an enchanter for mezz and a bard for fading memories.

It was hard to find things up in this tier quite a lot. Everything generally got better the farther along I got though; more triggered and instanced content made things better, including Epic 1.5's instanced/triggered content.

Stage 4 (~Emperor Ssraeshza): At this tier, I added the BoT tower bosses, the Caprin Cycle, and Culthor the Gatekeeper. These mobs generally drop items in the 100 hp/mana range. Some of the smaller Ssra raids (Xerkzih and Cursed) I moved down a tier – their loot is better than most Tier 3, but difficulty wise, they're easier than most of this tier by a good margin. I also added a bunch of the Noble's Causeway mini-raids.

I found a fair bit of competition for these mobs; Emporor Ssra there was several weeks where the same person was killing him, and the Planes of Power Bosses I often had to check back 3-4 times to find. Even Terris Thule, which I would have guessed would never be killed, was down several times I went to look for her. Mith Marr took me months to find up.

These raids are generally being done at 65 with 350-400AA spent on each group. The latter few were done with 400AA spent on groups 2-4, 475AA spent on group 1. That's Emp, Sol Ro stuff, and Seru (if I ever get Seru).

Most flagging raids I only did once.

Sanctus Seru: Lord Inquisitor Seru – 1.2 million life, doubles 800, 20s stun, 300pt unresistable AE dot. I tried once at 61 with 300AA spent, but I didn't realize he required bane weapons and my macros were not set up.
Building Seru bane weapons was awful. One of the worst things I've done; maybe worse than 24 VT shards or Emp bane weapons. Meteor dust are a chance drop off only 6 mobs. Shissar Blood is quite rare from nameds in Ssra – someone ended up giving me 24. Shissar Ichnor isn't bad, but Fungoid Sap is also a 11.55% chance drop off about 15 mobs on a 22 minute timer. Every yttrium weapon requires 2 sets of the ichors/bloods, and the failure on the yttrium steel is 335
Then you have to do banded to get each character who wants a bane weapon's smithing skill up. I did 142 with Ornate Chain on my first 4, but realized that was overkill and just went 115 with Banded Mail; which I had 1 fail on 10 attempts on various combines from 117-130 trivial.
Then when I finally had weapons on all my melees (except my bards, because they don't matter), I went to kill Seru...only to find he wasn't up! Actually, it seems like the portal doesn't work, and someone is using a CoH mage to kill him? I never got another attempt at Seru, or checked if the portal got fixed. I finally got back to Seru like, a year or two later, at 70 with like 500-600 AA, and he was trivially easy at that point.

Ssraeshza Temple: Emperor Ssraeshza – 1.2 million life, quads 900, 4k nuke.
First attempt at 65 with 350-400 AA spent, got him to 59%. Don't have full emp weapons, didn't have full vet AA, but either way, I'll need a lot more DPS to finish this fight.
I attempted again with full emp weapons except 1 bard, tribute on, Ferocity and Cleave 2 augments done on every melee character, Dodge3 on the main tank and Dodge 2 on 3 clerics, full vet AA's, full burns, 425 AA on every group except the main one, 525AA on that group; got emp to 8% before wiping, which like...hurt. This might be simply outside the capability of 24 characters unless they're substantially overgeared; full elemental gear, perhaps I could do it? I can't handle the adds; enchanter auto-mezzes 4, but the remaining 4; once paired AE heals are done (clr+dru), ~2 minutes in, people start going down. I try to stun/attack the remaining 4 with my paladin and use group heals, but the Paladin can't hold agro and there is a little too much to do during the fight.
I went back at 70 with 600ish AA and killed him, but it still took Vet AA's and full burns and everything, and I still lost 4-5 characters. Emperor Ssra is definitely a standout in difficulty here.

Planes of Power: Sol Ro Tower – Arlyxir – 760k life, quads 1k, - By the time you can get here, super easy. These were for back-gearing not-quite full raids, but on PEQ when you run a raid together, if you can flag for Sol Ro this encounter is trivial.
Planes of Power: Sol Ro Tower – Jiva – 610k life, quads 1k, 500pt AE – As above, trivial.
Planes of Power: Sol Ro Tower – Xuzl – 600k life, quads 1k. –> The Flaming Swords nuked me hard.
Planes of Power: Sol Ro Tower - The Protector of Dresolik – 800k life, quads 1k, --> Easy, though a long way getting there.
Planes of Power: Sol Ro Tower – Rizlona – 600k life, quads 1400, 500pt AE ---> Piece of cake.
Planes of Power: Terris Thule – 500k life, quads 1k,
I thought this was going to be totally trivial, but it was a bit more difficult than I expected. That being said, I did it without rebuffing, and without deaths, so it wasn't that difficult.

Plane of Hate: Maestro of Rancor – 450k life, doubles 1k with 1500pt lifetap.
Pretty easy encounter at 65 with 350-400aa; I tried to kill the adds but they respawn, and Maestro life-tapped himself from 25% life to 50% life while that happened. Killed 3-4 times.

Planes of Power: Aerin`Dar – 350k life, quads 1300, 3k DD and slow, 700pt DD AE fear Killed first attempt, was quite easy.
Planes of Power: Grummus – 450k life, quads 1100, big AE dots. - Killed first attempt, was quite easy.
Planes of Power: Manaetic Behemoth – 175k life, quads 850, big AE's.

Killed on my first attempt, but the raid wiped as well. I got the loot but not the flag. Was easier on the second attempt with a better spider strategy, though I still lost 2 bards and had a bit of a mess rescuing their corpses in time for the flag – luckily I got it.

Planes of Power: Rydda`Dar – 500k life, quads 2k, 2.5k ae and ae fear/dot - Still totally a push over at 65 with 350-400AA spent.
Planes of Power: Tallon Zek – 550k life, quads 1k, AE's? - Instantly destroyed without infusion, instantly killed with Infusion. Infusion is the real deciding factor here; or if you had a well programmed ranged team.
Planes of Power: The Seventh Hammer – 1 million life, quads 1100, - Oddly a pushover at 65 with 350-400 AA and tier 2-3-4 gear. Super easy, super quick.
Planes of Power: Vallon Zek – Doubles 800, life not worth mentioning - Totally a pushover at 65 with 350-400 AA. Super easy, super quick. Stoked to get cleric blam hammers for LdoN's. Farmed enough to get the hammers; probably 10-12 kills?
SolC Raid: Culthor the Gatekeeper – 300k life, quads 700, lots of adds. - Stomped through me at 61 with 300AA, was easy at 65 with 350-400AA. Having my healers casually able to off tank and heal through made all the difference, plus psalm of veeshan eliminating the AE.
Planes of Power: Caprin Cycle – 140k life, quads 1100, more complex.
The hardest part of the Caprin Cycle were the guards for the final mob; those 5k life tap procs are nuts, and a double proc would kill whoever was tanking at the time. Both ate 3-4 characters before dying.
Noble's Causeway: Alpha Feran: Quads 3300, only 300k life, adds. Drops 100hp/mana items. Was easy at 65 with 350-400 AA spent. Killed 10-20 times over the while, getting gear.
Noble's Causeway: Drarakon the Mad: Quads 2500, AE fear and 1kDD, but only 110k life. Every kill he eats 4-5 characters, but his low life means he isn't hard. Killed 10-20 times over the while, getting gear.
Noble's Causeway: Slavedriver Menlo: Quads 1500, spawns a few adds. Pretty easy. 100Hp/mana items. Killed 10-20 times over the while, getting gear.
Noble's Causeway: Bonecracker: AE feign death, good bracers, weapon, cloak, not particularly difficult in this era. Killed 10-20 times over the while, getting gear.

Planes of Power: Saryrn – 900k life, triples 500, 800pt DD.
Surprisingly difficult, but in part because I didn't know where to position to avoid the silence. Got on my first attempt by spreading my healers around the room so at basically any time, at least one was unsilenced, but still randomly lost a tank and 4-5 other characters late in the fight.


Positive Standouts: Nothing really comes to mind.
Negative Standouts: Seru Bane weapons.

 

Tier 5 and Epic 1.5's, which were done at the end of Tier 5/Start of Tier 6

Stage 5 (~Vex Thal): At this tier I added two smaller Gates of Discord raid targets, one of which is BIC only triggered, and the other exists in general but is also used for BIC. These mobs generally drop items in the 100hp/mana range, with occasional overages (115/125 hp/mana).

Planes of Power: Rallos Zek
Made an attempt just to look at it and figure it out at 65/350-400 AA; got RZ final phase to 55%; accidentally pulled Tallon early and had to use most of my AE heals, then didn't plan for the AE ramp on fake RZ and had a 50% wipe. My second attempt didn't even get to RZ; I thought I was going to be clever and separate Tallon from the Hendin Shadowmasters he spawns with...but I guess SoE didn't want that, because each time I feigned death the Hendin's respawned, including the ones I didn't peel. I ended up accidentally pulling TZ + 12 Hendins and swiftly wiping. I went back and did it with other people, but I will make an attempt at some point during the EP phase once I've got all 24 Epic 1.5's done.

Positioning your box on the Tallon Side is easier; you get an easier split on Tallon, and Vallon is an easier fight for boxes.

Planes of Power: Solusek Ro: First attempt was right after RZ, so a lot of my burns were down; I only had one AE heal. I stripped the DS but I lost tanks; I'm not 100% sure what happened; slow landed and he only doubles for 1800 but he seemed to attack really fast. Despite losing tanks, I got him down to 15% with no burns and only one AE heal, so having full armor/intensity/infusion I'm sure I'll have no trouble. I got it a few days later without issue.

Vex Thal ---> I finally got pieces from someone elses emp kill (using Bard group DA to run through the kill room) and was really excited to try this zone. 65 with 500 AA spent on 3 groups, maxed AA on one group, 5 Epic 1.5 completed, 24 characters, tribute on...it wasn't enough DPS. Wow, what a tedious, attrocious zone with huge mob density, and I had a mix of elemental tier gear from 3-4 VP clears and a bit of Elemental planes killing and some random other stuff. I woke up one morning with 5 hours and was like, this will be great, I'll clear VT. I didn't know the zone or what I was doing...I mangled my pull on one of the silencing mobs and had to evac and run back in – I killed both silencers, then mangled a pull just after them and had so many mobs, I've no idea how, like 16 or 18; then I got the north tower mini on the first floor, but Blob 1 wasn't up; nor was South tower mini, but I didn't realize, so I cleared there, and the first boss on level 2 was killed too, but judging by track, everything else was up – had I been more diligent about checking track I could have gotten a little farther, but I was running out of my 5 hours; like seriously 4 hours for 3 named and a bunch of trash.

I want to go back at some point and do it; maybe once I've completed all 24 Epic 1.5's, but it's hard to see where in my life I'll get a free like, 8 hours to just sit and grind my way through it.

My second attempt was barely better; attempted with 22 epic 1.5's, ~25-30% EP gear, 700AA on group 1 and 600 on groups 2-4, and no spells past 65; it took 7 hours to successfully clear every named except one, which got stuck outside the zone; I had a partial wipe when dealing with that. Which then meant my Aten Ha Ra kill deathtouched me non-stop. Just totally not worth the time, which is a pity because the zone has some unique irreplaceable clicky effects and focus effects; Aten Ha Ra has mana pool clickies for Priests and Casters that don't get replaced until PoTime, Call of Sky/Call of Fire items don't get replaced until PoTime, Xuzl's Flaming sword necklace for not-Wizards, research skill mod items.

Wall of Slaughter: Velitorkin --- Finding him up was the challenge. Killing him...wasn't too bad, actually. I used vet AA's and things but I think I probably didn't need to. Long fight with the fling, but his damage output wasn't that outrageous, especially once slowed. All his BP's are decent. Probably killed him like 40-50 times.

Barindu: Ikaav Ixvet Pox/BIC #2: This encounter was outrageously easy/push over at 65 with 400AA spent and mostly 75-125 HP/mana gear on most characters. Some of the loots are still small upgrades in a few slots, in particular the mask, as many of my characters still have 50 hp/mana Silverwing Masks from The Deep. Killed at least enough times to get everyone the BIC piece.

Qinimi: BIC #1, Pixtt Xictic Krnve: This encounter was outrageously easy/push over at 65 with 400AA spent and mostly 75-125 HP/mana gear on most characters. Some of the loots are still small upgrades in a few slots. Did enough to get everyone their BIC pieces.

Planes of Power: Agnarr the Storm Lord

---> Beat at 65 with 400ish AA, but it was a long, hard fight, and most vet aa's got used.

Planes of Power: Bertoxxulous

---> Beat at 65 with 400ish AA, but it was a long hard fight, and most vet AA's got used, and nearly ran out of mana and wiped. Honestly, the real surprise was the random Adan who procced 5k lifetaps – I had a wipe to one of them because I wasn't expecting it and double procs ate any character it was fighting, or a round of ~3* 600 hits + 5k lifetap honestly would kill most of my characters.

Plane of Mischief: Bristlebane

1st attempt won, but with half the raid dying, and using all the vet AA's. My warrior went down at ~20%, and the rest of the raid slowly died and killed him. I think if I use a CH chain I'll have better attempts. Tried again with a CH chain a bit more power; was easy.

Plane of Hate: Innoruuk

1st attempt was a mess. After that I had a weirdly hard time finding him up. I look forward to when I can focus on more instanced content. Second attempt I got him, when I knew there were tonnes of respawning adds; I set the enchanter to mezz using Bless of the Nihil and I really focused on getting healers MGB hots going at good intervals. I wasn't expecting to have to kill the evangelist first, so I got Innoruuk to 4% and was stuck for a minute before I figured out to kill the Evangelist. I did lose 8-9 characters, including all the clerics, SK and Warrior. Luckily I saved the Paladin for rezzing. Did him 2-3 more times and it was easier.

Planes of Power: Mithaniel Marr

Killed on the first attempt. Dealing with the pulling and his 3 minis was harder than he was; he was kinda a pushover himself, truth be told. I got to him pretty late in this tier because he was hard to find up, so characters were better geared and AA'ed then they were for say, the Agnarr or Bertoxx fights; I'd already done 2 clears of Veeshan's Peak, for example, which I did early because I was struggling to find targets available.

DoN: Calling Emoush: Bizarrely trivially easy for the tier of gear. 20 trash mobs and then a really fast raid encounter.
DoN: Trial of Preservation: Bizarrely trivially easy for the tier of gear. 12 trash mobs, then a really easy boss.

I did Rondo with help to get Vxed access since I couldn't do sewers, did Vxed (which wasn't that bad to do with 4 groups at a time), and then I started my Epic 1.5's.

Warrior epic 1.5: warrior Epic 1.5; only the Krekk fight was kinda difficult; I messed up the pull, but I got it with vet aas and groups 2-3-4 at 450AA spent, group 1 at 550 AA spent, and gear mostly in the 100-125 hp/mana range, with a few elemental tier items (20-30) spread out across 24 characters. Honestly the hardest/slowest part was Everfrost; the raids were generally easy, and the camps/runs were generally pretty easy too. I think I completed this entire epic start to finish in like, 6-7 hours. I did use Vet AA's for the Krekk fight.

Cleric Epic 1.5: Wow was this easy. I had all the pieces basically and it took less than 2 hours in total? Some of my clerics don't have the Barindu note, but they all have all 4 Ferubi pieces, and 2/3 brains; the last brain is quick and easy, and I guess the Barindu note is the big bottleneck but I'll watch for it being OOC'ed for other clerics. Fights were easier than Krekk too. Basically: 2/3 brains you'll have by virtue of VT keying/emp keying; the 4 ferubi notes you'll have from Rondo, and the bloods you're decently likely to see some of by virtue of just playing around OoW. Even if you have to farm any specific piece, the entire epic is a few hours max. One of my cleric epics bugged out unfortunately, but eventually got fixed (thank you!).

Bard Epic 1.5: Can't do without elemental access; so I got help with Rallos Zek to get EP access. Fire, Air, Earth Mephit blood wasn't too bad; water mephit blood was awful. Metallic liquid took 6-7 hours, the Plane of Justice piece was kinda bad too; Storms and CoDecay were easy though. Foraging didn't take too long, but the Dragorn Bloods were bad; I think took me as long as 8 hours in total? Someone told me they thought the bard was as easy as the cleric, but wow do I disagree; first of all the farms were way harder. Then the runs to Dragon Necropolis were way more a hassle. Once you've got the farms done it wasn't too bad (the second fight in Dragon Necropolis is a little tough, I had 3 clerics die and had to staunch the last; but I didn't have AE heals or armor of experience up and I wasn't prepped with burns as much as I should have been; it was easier on the latter 3 passes.)

Wizard epic 1.5: First Girplan fight was pretty tough, used vet AA's and various burns. Second Girplan fight I wiped, not sure why. Nightmare was easy, collecting ore was easy, but it turns out Scarlet Desert was so tough I have to put the Wizard epic on hold. I got back to Girplan at level 70, 600AA, 19 Epic 1.5's, and no spells past 65 and it was still a tough fight.

I tried Sun Rev again; even at 70 with 600AA and no spells and 19 Epic 1.5's, I wiped with him at 3%, though I didn't have Vet AA's or even most discs up/MGB heals...so...another attempt at some point fully ready. I finally got it with better positioning; casters can heal and cast without being in range of the AE, and that sorted me out really closely paying attention to ranges. Once I finished that...the rest of the epic is pretty easy but a lot of running around – 6 spiderling silks are oddly time consuming, as was the Gunthak piece, taking 5-6 * 7 minute passes each time. Aside from the Ranger epic fight, these are some of the toughest epic 1.5 fights.

Shaman Epic 1.5: First underwater fight was easy. I thought the AE stun would be worse, but it wasn't too bad. A lot of running around for this one, though I had a decent number of pieces already. Swarmfiend was pretty easy too. The Crypt of Decay piece was up, which is good, because otherwise it would have been awful to farm. Howling Stones was pretty quick and easy, thanks to already having a master key. A lot of this stuff would be awful if you didn't already have keys and master keys and things. The worst part was the ukun skins; took a couple hours. Definitely longer than the cleric 1.5, maybe on par with the warrior 1.5? Raids were very easy though, so that was nice.

Rogue Epic 1.5: Ouch. What a mess. I accidentally skipped the Vah`shir baking task because I thought you could skill all except one, instead of just one. The halfling brewing/baking task probably took 2-3 hours alone. I got pretty lucky on the melon (7.5% drop from 10% spawn on 23 spawn points; 4 of the harvesters were up on my first pass and one dropped it). But it's pretty bad when one of the first simple tasks of the epic takes longer than the entire cleric epic 1.5. Poisons was pretty easy, cost me around 10kpp. Honestly, none of these ended up as bad as I thought they would, but tailoring took a couple hours, smithing took a couple hours, poison took a few hours...the whole tradeskills section was probably 10-15 hours of kinda tedium. Fishing in Gunthak was brutal too. Got stuck on the 4th floor of TOFS for an hour for no reason other than unlucky spawns. Finally finishing this epic felt good.

Paladin Epic 1.5: Might contend with the rogue one for terrible. The fishing alone took me 6ish hours; the Qinimi farm took 3-4 passes and that whole gates of discord section generally took several hours. Plus a lot of small steps and running around. Then the Ruined Catacombs of Dranik section was impossible to complete at 65; so I had to put this one on hold. Tried again at 70, no spells, 550 AA, and elemental tier gear; ran out of DPS; maybe if the comp was a bit better; I was running Pal/Brd/Clr/Wiz/Enc/Ber, but maybe if I swapped the Wiz for a rogue? This group just had Cleric/Bard/Enc epic, maybe with Ber and Rogue epic done, or another 100AA, or spells?

I finally redid it- level 70, swapped the wizard for a rogue, 600AA spent on everyone, but no level 70 spells yet. It was a real fight. Possibly the toughest portion of any epic 1.5? The final fight was pretty hard, even though I had 18 1.5AA's, 600ish AA on everyone, level 70 (no spells past 65).

Shadowknight Epic 1.5: Honestly not that bad. Tailoring 100 was the worst part; Picnic baskets to 76, then a couple hours in Velketors for Crystalline Silk to 100. The rest of the mobs were already up or quick easy farms with common drop rates. The rest of the epic took less time than the tailoring.

Enchanter Epic 1.5: Lots of little running around steps, but I had actually been to most of the zones and happened to grab the pages while passing through; I even had the Vxed and PoJustice pieces of the staff, which all made things feel smoother, and my enchanter is my tradeskilling character so the tradeskills were done. The only parts that felt rougher were navigating Skyshrine for that page, and foraging for the Dragon Egg in WW – which after an hour, I was OOCing about, and someone graciously gave me a spare.

Beastlord Epic 1.5: You're the mailman! The entire quest is easy, none of the camps or raids are hard, but 3/4's of it is just running around to different zones to deliver letters or objects. Took a few hours.

Mage Epic 1.5: Ice Burrower Meat is the worst part of it, but if you're clever, you'll check track every time you pass through the zone and already have it. Metallic Liquid is also oddly slow to get. The rest of the epic is easy, until the Air Ring in Noble's Causeway – whoa that was a mean and long fight. I wiped at 65 with max AA's on my guys and 14 epic 1.5's done. Tried again at 70 with no spells, 650 AA on group one and 550 aa on groups 2-4 and got it barely with vet AA's and burns.

Necromancer epic 1.5: Generally found this one quick and easy. I had some of the items already – the hole book. The Gleaming Zhrathrix Ore was one of the harder steps. Balls of Elemental Clay were fast. Paladins and triggered raids were quick. Tarlang was a bit of a nail biter – I was down to 10 characters when I finished him off (65, maxed AA's, 12 epic 1.5's and gear in the 100-135 hp/mana range in most slots). Took a few hours max.

Monk Epic 1.5: Generally pretty quick; I had many of the pieces already. Lots of reasonably quick triggered fights. The Keeper was a brutal one for me; first I had people run off the ledge. Then I used root me, and I had characters get eaten by AE ramp, which caused the clerics to stop healing the tank and the tank went down. Then I set a CH chain, did AE MGB heals...and he eventually casts an AE spell slow, which disrupts the heal chain. I didn't get him at 65; I leveled to 70 and had 650AA on my main group and 550AA on the rest before I got him.

Berserker Epic 1.5: I had most of the pieces, bought a few others, farmed the rest. Honestly, totally bonkers easy – as easy as the Cleric 1.5, perhaps. The fight wasn't a real challenge at 70 with ~600AA spent and only level 65 spells.

Ranger Epic 1.5: I had a lot of issues with this epic; I did Tunare so my faction was trashed, so I had to repair that – 4 hours of crushbone and then 30 minutes of muffins fixed that. I had the wrong net equipped I guess so had trouble with one of the things? Then the fights were hard – The natimbi fight in particular I had elementals spawning faster than I killed them...so in round 2 I burned the named down and the elemental I needed never spawned. Round 3 I killed elementals until I saw the named, then killed the main raid guy, but my raid wiped to the 15 elementals roving around at that point. I luckily had time to come back in. The very final fight in RCOD I don't think would be possible at all until a substantially higher gear tier, or several live players – I spent an hour failing to split it. Maybe if I had level 70 spells and abilities I'd be able to lull/mezz, but even the 6 respawning golems + the 2 named would have been hard – I ended up getting help for this one. Not the longest, most tedious epic (that goes to the Rogue, of course), but definitely on the harder end of the fights for sure. Probably having people live to kite/mezz/offtank adds would make it easier.

Other than Epic 1.5's and the Elemental tier raids, I did a bunch of loops of Portto WoS>>>NC Portto Bloodfields>>>RCoD Portto WoS >>>MPG>>>RSS looking for nameds and small raids to get runes. Greater (level 69) runes turned out easiest. Glowing are the worst, in part because of how camped and busy MPG and RSS are.

I also did Tier 1 DoN progression to get my level 61 spells and other DoN spells, some of which are super good and some of which are totally irrelevant. The level 68+ tasks (I did Kill 6 Blackwing Drakes) were actually like barely within the power level of my group. Even the Tier 1 Group tasks was pretty hard – took about 1 hour to run all the groups through it. I tried the the schematics task but it was no better and gave less crystals. In particular, group 4 which only has the ranger to tank and no slower was in really bad shape; couldn't really handle pulls of 2 without a death, and sometimes the ranger would randomly go down on burst damage even with the cleric healing at 80%. That group I ended up using the bard to split everything with fading memories, but it slowed things down. Ranger has 10k life at this point.

I worked on Tier2 progression; wow, that's miserable. Sandy Goblin Bloods are like...1-1.5 task completions per zone clear. The ascent is better; my first zone clear got me 43 of them (5 and a bit tasks). But still very grindy for little reason; I guess this is content that works way better when playing fewer characters. The first raid (Calling Emoush) is bizarrely easy.

I did Tier 3 progression as well; the raids again, aren't bad at all. The farms are so tedious it hurts. But the special AA are wonderful.

I really wanted to get into PoTime myself, but it became clear the only way to do that would be to over-gear so much there would be no point in doing PoTime, so I got help with Xegony, Coirnav, and Rathe Council. I tried to do elemental tier LdoN raids, but basically none of them were completed.

Positive Standouts: Most Epic 1.5's; PoP Raids.
Negative Standouts: What an incredible disappointment Vex Thal was.

 

Stage 6 (~Elemental Planes): I'm putting Epic 1.5's here; I'll try to do them at the start of this Tier and see how it goes. I'd like to do them early enough on characters that they stay in use for a long time, rather than just being a clicky. These mobs drop items in the 125-150hp/mana range. I got to 550AA spent on every group in here and leveled to 70 to complete more epic 1'5s in here. The Epic 1'5s vary massively in difficulty.

Ferubi: Packmaster Skoiat Pizak --- Killed on the first attempt, pulled to the center of the zone, but it was rough; died to adds, had to rez and run back to loot (which left 6 minutes left on the corpse). This was before epic 1'5s, so 65, 350-450aa, 20-30 pieces of elemental tier gear.

Tried again killing him on his spawn point with no vet Aas, level 70, 22 epic 1.5's, 700aa on group one and 600 on the rest...and wiped. So definitely pull to the center of the zone. Tried again at similar power in the centre of the zone with enchanter on auto-mez, and it was trivial, no deaths.
Ferubi: Weapon Master Vtiink Vzaan (Smith Rondo)
Ferubi: Zun`Muram Votal ---> First attempt was a wipe; barely even was able to engage. Tried to kill the adds, but it was a mess. Second attempt I got single pulled and got him to 20% at which point he warped back to spawn. I don't think he's supposed to be splittable; I only ever split him with character deaths. I tried kiting him, but unfortunately, my bard lost agro, and the 2 adds ate through my raid slowly; got him to 26%, no armor or intensity or infusion or longburns, so it'd probably doable with everything up – but why bother? Having now learned about /circle on 50, I could probably do this.

Lost Dungeons of Norrath Raids
Guk: The Rescue ---> Not Implemented
Miragul: Frozen Nightmare (35AC aug for plates) ---> Pretty easy at 70, 550AA, 16 epic 1.5's, level 65 spells. The 4 skeletons was the hardest part. Took about 1.5 hours. Loot was garbage on first run – 4 junk augs (no HP, no AC), bracer, belt.
Miragul: Spider Den ---> Not Implemented
Mistmoore: Scion Lair of Fury ---> Not Implemented
Rujark: War March ---> Not Implemented
Takish-Hiz: Sunken Library --- Not Implemented
Takish-Hiz: The Palace Grounds --- Not Implemented

Planes of Power: Plane of Air
Did a clear at 70, no spells past 65, 600AA on each group except group 1, 700AA's, and 22 epic 1.5s (no druid, everyone else). Way harder than Water or Fire. First ring Wind, I had to split the mobs diligently; I partially wiped trying to pull all of them and had to evac, Gakamaneil (Pheonix 1) was easy. Rings 2 and 3 were easier, but Ring 4 was really hard managing the 15 spiders. I attempted it first at 70, 800AA on group one and 650AA on groups 2-4, 22 epic 1.5's, and level 70 spells on a couple characters. I wiped, but I had auto-mez running not ae stun, and I didn't have Vet AA's up. I tried again with vet AA's and AE stuns twice; got him to 6% and 22%. The final wind ring is brutal.

Planes of Power: Plane of Earth and Plane of Earth B
Peregrin Rockskull, the first ring to the left, was trivially easy at 70, group 1 has spells, 700ish aa, 22 epic 1'5s. Took 15 minutes from zoning in to finish the event.
Monstrous Mudwalker was harder --- the guide said to do it from the spawnpoint, which was fine, but by the time I spawned Monstrous Mudwalker I was mostly OOM – the guide also missed the adds spawning, so I ended up having to staunch some clerics, lost 3 characters, and use armor and intensity. I think this one is not actually better done from the spawnpoint.
Derugoak Bloodwalker was harder still ---> Mostly just didn't bother pulling or having AE mez on, and probably should have. Ended up regularly with 6-12 mobs in camp, at one point had like 15; I didn't clear around the temple and I definitely should have. Once I sorted the pulling out it was easier though.
The Perfected Warder of Earth ring was the worst ---> My guide said the final mob spawns 6 adds, but it spawns 13+ and they're instant respawn, so they slowly eat through my raid while I burned the Perfected Warder. I managed to kill him but didn't get the loot.
The Mystical Avatar of Earth was comparatively a total push over.

Plane of EarthB: None of the minis leading up to Rathe Council proved difficult in any particular way. Rathe Council was miserable, however. Me, Soulree (18, Anguish+ gear) and Lihel (12, Anguish+ gear) couldn't get it. We had a strategy of using bards to mezz the mezzables and get them to low life, but by the time we figured out all the pulling, we were losing focus and people were accidentally killing the low life ones. I ended up doing with Lilsong and one other; 54+18 CoA geared characters. I pulled the mezzables, we got them all down to 10%, mezzed with an /endmacro bard manually, and then we were going to pull a couple of the normals and kill...except I screwed up the pull and got the remaining 6. Luckily we were enough to burn it down, though I lost most of my characters and the other two lost some too.

Planes of Power: Plane of Fire ---> I did a full clear at 70 with 550 AA and 15 epic 1.5s. None of the raids were particularly difficult. Even Fennin Ro.

Jaxoliz Dawneyes ---> Harder of the two pheonix's, hits a bit harder. Trivial for my 24 box at 66 with 500 AA and Tier 4-5 gear and 14 epic 1.5's completed.
Criare Sunmane ---> Easier of the two pheonix's, doesn't hit quite as hard. Trivial for my 24 box at 66 with 500 AA and Tier 4-5 gear and 14 epic 1.5's completed.
Quavonis Firetail ---> Surprisingly easy at 70 with 550 aa and 15 epic 1.5s.
General Druuav Flamesinger ---> Easy with a CH chain, probably easy without. Did at 70, 550 AA on each box, and VT-EP gearish, 15 AA 1.5's.
Bubonix The Spider Queen ---> Trivial for my 24 box at 66 with 500 AA and Tier 4-5 gear and 14 epic 1.5's completed. Just keep clearing the poison dot/mana drain on your clerics.
Blablalblah the Omnifiend ---> I accidentally agroed while exping and killed no problem at 67-68 with with 500 AA and Tier 4-5 gear and 14 epic 1.5's completed.
Magmaton ---> Trivial for my 24 box at 70 with 550 AA and 15 epic 1.5's; used a CH chain for the DPS, but other than that.
Pyronis ---> Easy at 70 with 550 aa and 15 epic 1.5s.
General Reparm ---> Easy at 70 with 550 aa and 15 epic 1.5s, though I did use a CH chain.
Arch Mage Yvonis ---> Easy at 70 with 550 aa and 15 epic 1.5s, though I did use a CH chain.
Fennin Ro, Tyrant of Fire ---> I thought this was going to be way worse, but with 15 epic 1.5's, 550aa, level 70, level 65 spells, a CH chain, mass heals and vet AA's, this was pretty easy. It didn't really feel any more difficult than any of the other minis.

Planes of Power: Plane of Water

Did a clear at 70, no spells past 65, 600AA on each group except group 1, 700AA's, and 22 epic 1.5s (no druid, everyone else). Grioihin the Wise was trivial. Hydrotha was trivial, Krizik the mighty was Trivial, Ofossa the Enlightened was trivial. Coirnav...I agroed the first named, thinking I could just kill it, but it had 2.5 million life. I think I need a better strategy (perhaps a Paladin /twisting root and my enchanter AE stunning) and more DPS before I go back for another attempt. Apparently the Lute from Grioihin the Wise is relevant; insta-click.

Veeshan's Peak: I intended to do the quests, but I never bothered. Veeshan's peak when you're geared up sufficiently is a a fast raid with a lot of great loot. Trash mobs drop good items, the bosses have good elemental tier items, and there are some clickies that are decent and on timers that don't get conflict for a long time.

I did Suled' Darrs Shade at 65 with 400AA on groups 2-4, 475AA on group 1. I did it before completing Emp Ssra or Rallos Zek, and it was generally easier; while the damage output was high, his HP is really low. That gets you access to VP to turn quests in, if you care to faction, but while tedious, they're easy access to 6 Elemental Tier items, with only group difficulty.

Hoshkar: First kill, easy. Mostly resisted, though dots killed a few characters after Hoshkar died. Didn't use vet AA's or burns. Wizard/Cleric staffs.
Silverwing: First kill; AE's a lot, fast. Had to use armor since many mgb heals were down. Definitely armor or infusion or full slate of MGB heals. Need a druid staff still
Druushk: First kill: Pretty easy. Had 1mgb heal, used group heals otherwise. Ench/nec staffs
Nexona: First Kill: Tough; had way more life, and seemed to throw down a 4k nuke; Dragon Harm touch apparently. Dropped all my group heals and 1-2 hour burns; had armor/intensity down unfortunately. I killed her with like, 9 characters out of 24 left. Was easy with infusion/intensity/armor; used only 1 group heal, no deaths. Once better geared, easy.
Xygoz: First kill: With infusion, intensity, full burns and group heals; half the raid died. Xygoz – definitely the hardest, save vet aas. Even at 70 with 550 AA and 15 epic 1.5's, wiped at 8% when I didn't have many MGB's and vet AA's up.
Phara Dar: With infusion, I think generally easier than Xygoz/Nexona. Getting a full clear on VP on my first attempt felt great, but Veteran's AA's definitely were required for a bunch of fights.

Tipt: I did all 4 groups at once; lack of focus on alt-tabbing resulted in 1 group wiping, but running them through again took less than an hour. Tipt wasn't that hard with ~550AA, level 70, level 65 spells.

Walls of Slaughter: Pyrique Redwing (Req 66) ---> Got on my first attempt once someone told me you can con to see which one is real, but it was still a bit of a fight at 70, 22 epic 1.5's, 700AA on group 1 and 600 on the rest. Also, the real kill only counts if you bring it to 89%, so it's kind of a DPS check. Once you know that you can use harm touch and mana blast to trigger it if you're low on DPs though.

Walls of Slaughter: Tarn Icewind (Req 70) ---> Pretty easy, actually. Long, and my DPS was arguably too low, but wasn't really dangerous. Did at 70, 700aa on group 1, 600 on the rest, and 22 epic 1.5's, no spells past 65.

Walls of Slaughter: Murkglider Hivequeen (Req 66) → Didn't have enough DPS at 70, 22 epic 1.5's, 700AA on 1 group and 600 on the rest; switching targets all the time, even with my warrior spamming /target a quivering and killing them as soon as they popped, eventually one got through and spawned adds, and it was done there. Tried again with some spells (8 characters, plus DoN spells) and was able to get it, though it's quite the DPS check to deal damage to Murkglider Queen + kill the adds at the same time.

RCOD: Kyv Sharpshooters --- Did for the first time at 70, 550AA, level 65 spells, 16 epic 1.5's, was trivially easy.
Noble's Causeway: Lannal the Beast Tamper (Req 65) - Doesn't seem to be programmed

DoN: Volkaar's Bite: Not too bad for Elemental tier, and the loot is Type 8 augment (but the HP/mana is on average a bit low for PoTime tier). You gotta track or use /target Egg to keep on top of the eggs, but otherwise not bad, and easier than Murkglider Hivequeen since the eggs are by percentage life not 30s timer.

DoN: Goblin Dojo: Reasonably easy for elemental tier loot. Probably easier to handle than most PoP events.
Bloodfields: Gazz the Gargantuan ---> What is even going on with this mob? Crazy difficulty for the loot level.
Bloodfields: Myhree the Flighty ---> Very easy by the time I got to him, and easy for the quality of loot, especially considering the mana regen clicky.


Standouts for this tier; Plane of Fire for a fast raid with a lot of good loot; same with Veeshan's Peak, plus has the advantage of some cool clickies. They're both kinda loot pinyata zones.
Negatives for this tier: 3/4 elemental bosses being like, just disproporionately more difficult than any other content on the tier.

 

Stage 7 (~Plane of Time): Here, I tiered the Kod`taz Summoner ring down a tier (it's noticeably easier than the Ikkinz trials or Uqua once you know it), and specified the other two Kod`Taz open zone events. These mobs drop items in the 150-200hp/mana range, generally around 170/180. The Ikkinz Group Trials drop items in the lower end of this range as well and might be worth doing. I actually ended up merging in Tier 8 as well – Uqua – it only had a few raids.



I really wanted to do everything I could to get here myself, but it was clear it wasn't happening without overgearing. When I finally did get time flagged, everyone had full EP gear plus some augments, 1-2 items past that each (epic and maybe 1 other); I had ~50% of my level 66-70 spells, Group 1 has 900AAish and groups 2-3-4 have 700-750aa, which basically buys everything but the general stat and tradeskills AA. Everyone has Ferocity3 and Cleave3 augments, and Tanks and Clerics and 1 or two others have Dodge3 as well. I still haven't done druid epic 1.5's though. The fact that I cleared PoTime right at the start (with Vet AA's for Quarm) felt really good, and like a huge point of success for a progression team.



Plane of Time B

I took my first attempt as one of the first Tier8 raids I did; I had maybe 12-18 items in the 150-180 hp/mana range, but probably not even one per character. I had 22 epic 1.5s, 20 tier 1 OoW BP's (missing Cleric, Cleric, Monk, Necro), group 1 has 900 aa and the rest have 750, which is basically all of them, and I had 1 MPG group trial done so 558 resists. Most characters have high 400's to 500's resists, stats mostly maxed, etc. Warrior had 14khp 2.5k ac going in; Pal/SK around 13k, melees around 12k and casters around 11khp. I had my necromancer camped the entire time.

Phase 1: 45 minutes. No real issues.
Phase 2: 30 minutes – had some trouble with Earth/Air mass agroing, had to burn armor and intensity and long burns early, unfortunately.

Phase 3: I pulled all of the first wave; lost 1 cleric. Pulled all of the second wave with Divine intervention running, that helped, no losses. Pulled all of 3rd wave, lost 1 cleric. Pulled all of wave 4, lost 1 cleric. Phase 5 I tried to circle and failed, pulled it. Lost 11 out of 24. Wave 6 I tried to circle and succeeded. No deaths. Wave 7 circle worked well, I messed up agro a bit and had 2 deaths. Wave 8 circle worked, kiter died but after I killed the nameds; lost 2 characters; circle 50 is maybe a bit tight. Killed both of the golems no problem. Total time was 2 hours, 30 minutes of the 3 hours, 15 minutes I had available.

Terris Thule: Took 4.5 minutes; got it on the first attempt; my warrior died at the last moment and I had to staunch 2 clerics through the mana drain – I tried putting them on the wall and fighting TT around the corner, but that didn't block AE's; if I put them inside the zone in room instead does that block AE?

Tallon Zek: I used infusion, stomped through him no problem. Maybe I could have done it without infusion.

Vallon Zek: Paladin and ranger died; not sure if from agro ping pongs or from the adds.; I had the tail end of infusion. Seemed pretty easy though?
Saryrn: Actually probably the easiest; did without staunches; clerics were running oom except the 1st cleric, but shamans and druids still had mana for back up healing. No deaths. About 4 hours and 15 minutes to clear Phases 1-4, so I took nearly 2 hours in Phase 4, but I also like, went and got pizza and was trying to let MGB heals and quickburns recharge and things.

Cazic Thule: Very possibly easier than any of the Tier 4 mobs. Rogue pulled agro and died, but clerics all ended the fight at 40/60/70/90% mana respectively.

Bertoxxulus: I used 3 MGB heals (2 cleric, 1 druid) and quickburns; finished with plenty of mana. Pretty easy, like Cazic Thule.

Innoruuk: This was the first wipe; I managed to kill him, it all generally went pretty okay until the 5 adds at 20%; I decided to go for burning Innoruuk down, which was the correct choice; I ended up wiping but I killed Innoruuk and 3 of the adds, and managed to feign my necro and monk. Then they rezzed everyone up, I killed the last 2 adds, and then looted. I had quickburns, some longburns, and used 2-3 MGB heals.

Rallos Zek: I got him to 20%, MT died with the add phase; I sort of killed the adds and stabilized, but I guess I got too far from his corner and he popped to full health. Probably I had more burns/Vet AA/etc up, I could get him. This was about 6 hours in at this point, though the last while I did some chores and did a bit of waiting for burns to respawn.

I went back with everything up; I didn't use Vet Aas, but I used all 8 MGB heals, all short burns, all long burns. I got him, but it was rough; 8 dead; lost the main tank towards the end, all clerics except the first OOM. Now to go Afk for an hour and a half and try quarm.

Quarm: With Infusion, Armor, and Intensity, and all my burns refreshed but no staunches, I got Quarm. It was a close thing, with my warrior-sk-ranger all dying towards the end and all casters going OOM, but 21 characters survived.



Ultimately, while Vex Thal was a terrible disappointment when I got there, my first attempt at plane of time was a huge success. 24 elemental geared characters with Epic 1.5's and more or less maxed AA, plus Tier 3 (and 2 in a couple placse) DoN AA was enough; basically every single item to drop was an upgrade except a few weapons, and lots of the upgrades were big – 50-100 hp/mana, plus focuses and clickies.



My 3rd clear (2nd solo clear) I got everything no problem, and that was without over-gearing. It did take 6 hours; ~2 hours for phases 1-2-3, and then 4 hours for phases 4-5-6; a lot of times just waiting 15 minutes for all my epics, BP's, and quick burns to get re-enabled.



Kod`Taz: Temple of the Damned --- Super fast, super easy, 4 good loots; melee shoulders, hybrid mask, caster cloak, leather bracer.

Kod`Taz: Pit of the Lost --- Very chore-y to get to, pretty fast and easy to do. Drops shielding 2 leather boots of note, otherwise the caster and melee items are standard for the tier.

Kod'taz: Pixtt Grand Summoner ---> My first attempt relatively closely after my first PoTime run was messy because I didn't know the golems respawned indefinitely to reduce the Grand Summoner's life. Second attempt went smoother but I was running low on mana during the golems; they have such low HP but high damage, it's utter chaos of a fight; maybe I should lead from my SK or Paladin with better AE agro? Not sure they're equipped enough to tank. Also maybe enchanter auto-mezzing the 3 lessers, then offtank 2 of the 3 greaters and just killing one respawning greater/lesser would be more controlled? Might try that next time, but I brute forced through it, but had to use some staunches on clerics and armor of intenisty on everyone, and had 3-4 deaths. The loot is very good for the tier and the fact you can bash it out in ~20 minutes. Of note in the loot table is accuracy 12 ranged orbs for melees and hybrids.



Ikkinz Group 1: The Diabolic Destroyer randomly agros while fighting in the room; usually when I was killing the Ikaav near the named, but sometimes when killing the side-located golems. This is a tough one for sure with all the adds spawning. Group 1 and 3 manage to burn him down, but I didn't manage with groups 2 and 4 on the first attempt. Second attempt I got it on all 4 groups, knowing what to expect, and got 2 of the shielding 2 augments as well! The shielding 2 augment is a notable loot. Clearing to Ikkinz Group 1 is hard, too. There is a lot of density and unexpected agro; I had partial wipes clearing into the raid.



Ikkinz Group 2: Wow, what a slog. Groups 1 and 2 failed on the first attempt, figuring out the bosses. Group 3 got it, in part because of the SK harmtouch. Group 4 was able to eke out a victory as well, actually, so I think now that I've figured it out. Kill one, don't use any burns, rush the other. Pull it back into the corner a bit – group 2's mistake was that they agroed the second one by accident when the first was still at 4%. Second attempt completed on all groups; though once again I had trouble clearing into the temple; big agro, lots of mobs.



Ikkinz Group 3: These group trials are very tough. Only the first one has notable loot that might be worth farming. The third has a BIC piece though. The ranger group (group 4) wiped clearing in. Group 1 had little trouble; group 2 lost the tank towards the 3rd Flesh Hunter, and group 3 had a 50% wipe near the end. These mobs put out a lot of damage.



Ikkinz Raid 1: Lots of pretty tough mini bosses; I was pretty cavalier about them at the start, not using defensive, just attacking them, but they often ate my tank and 1-2 other characters; the first bunch of bosses have really low life, so it didn't matter. I turned tribute on, started using divine intervention and waiting for defensive, but that slowed things down with defensive's 10 minute reuse time. All in all, not very hard – easier than plane of time, for sure. Took a little over an hour in total. Second run was a lot faster; about 40 minutes. Tanked the bosses no problem.

Notable loot: 4damage 2hander augment, leather legs.



Ikkinz Raid 2: The Visionary of Glories Feign Death is super annoying; each kill I randomly lost a few characters, having to rez and rebuff. Leveling research to 100 was also pretty rough, and took 4-5 hours in the deep. 200 will probably be another 4-5 hours. Pixtt Condemner is easy by comparison. Took about an hour and a half, a good 30 minutes was me figuring out how to deal with the horncallers, moving characters around with E3 off. I was worried the final fight would be brutal; I used armor and intensity and it was trivial.

Notable loot: Plate legs.



Ikkinz Raid 3: Actually the easiest of them; The Transcendant Acolytes are a bit easier than the other minis, and there are only 5 of them. The boss fight is pretty easy. As long as you can /assiston /only|class, it's pretty trivial.

Notable loot: Tank shield, +10 accuracy ring.


Yxtta: Pixtt Suir Mindrider ---> I did this when I went to Yxtta for the first time for the Berserker epic 1.5. Push over at level 70, 550 aa spent, 16 epic 1.5's, otherwise VT-Elemental Tier gear, and only level 65 spells. Notable loot: cleric shielding ranges, melee shielding necks

Yxtta: Primal Arachnid ---> This one would be hard; the AE + ae mana drain quickly OOMS everyone, but I had enough DPS and defense to let 3 MGB heals (sham, Clr, Dru) keep everyone alive while I DPS'ed him down with quickburns only; one cleric staunched to keep the tank up. Further kills were even easier. Notable loot; 10 accuracy earing, 30ac aug.

Yxtta: Primal Insect ---> With Circle of Seasons + high resists and level 70, the 3k AE never stuck to anyone, making this fight also super easy.

Yxtta: Primal Reptile ---> Supremely Easy. Low damage, and the AE's don't really work.

Notable loot; 30ac aug.


Thundercrest Isle: Lore Warden ---> Not programmed.

Thundercrest Isle: Four Corners ---> Trivially easy. None of the mobs do any damage. For 2 Quarm Tier loot, pretty good deal.



Lost Dungeons of Norrath Raids:

Guk: Ritualist of Hate ---> The Raids have been easy to this point, so I didn't really look stuff up, and the big AE ramp on the Cavern Creeper got me when I had him at 8%. I tried again with AE heals prepped and got him. The Cursed Spore was also tough; mana drain hit everyone. Barely had enough power to continue it. Gragna the Cursed was easier. Before the final boss I waited 45 minutes for all AE heals to be up; used infusion, armor, intensity, and all burns – with that, it wasn't hard, but I'm not sure I could have done it without.

Notable loot: Flying kick for monk, pet weapon augment, Accuracy 10 augment,

Guk: The Curse Reborn ---> Requires 2 teams. Didn't try it.

Everfrost: Folly of Miragul's Ambition ---> Not Programmed

Mistmoore: Struggles with the Progeny ---> Pretty fast and small, though I wasn't ready for the boss fight (my guide didn't mention adds) so I ended up with Armor, intensity, and burning it down and losing a couple characters. Probably if I planned better I could do it normally no problem.

Notable loot; Rogue poison gloves, 5dmg 2hander aug, +10 strikethrough aug, 30ac aug, shielding 2 aug, healing focus aug, specialize conjuration aug, Backstab 20 aug, spell shield 3% aug --- might honestly have the best set of augments for the fastest and easiest raid.



Rujark: Hidden Vales of Deceit ---> Mob density is bizarrely big. Boss fight is tough, though not as tough as Takish-Hiz; did mmiedately after Takish Hiz. The boss fight I did okay with – 3-4 characters died and most of my clerics went oom, so it was close, but I got it without armor/intensity/staunches. Mobs don't respawn in this instance, so probably better tactic would be to kill the two mini nameds then evac, med, rebuff, and go for the big guy in one go.

Notable loot: Accuracy augment, kick augment, Backstab augment, avoidance augment.



Rujark: Prison Break ---> Probably the easiest Time Tier Raid. The double boss wasn't hard at all. Did at the same time as the others.

Notable loot: Combat effects +5 augment, Pet power augment, Monk Bst augment, slow 1hander augment (28 delay min), 25ac augment.



Takish Hiz- Within the Compact ---> Easy to clear to the boss battle. The boss battle is tough; I did this immediately after my first Uqua and wiped; 4* 400k mobs plus a 1.5 million life mob all to be fought at once; I was able to clear the 4 minis (which also require getting the main mob to 20% life) but then I was wiping; I was able to escape and camp a necro, cleric, rogue, and then come back in a nd corpse drag and go for the final kill – which wasn't hard with all the mini nameds dead.

Notable loot: Fire DD focus aug, spell shield 3% aug, 2dmg 1hb aug, specialize evocation augment.



Wall of Slaughter: Hulcror: Did immediately after the LdoN raids; 3 time clears, 1 Ikkinz Group/Raid clear, 1 Uqua, 5 primals, etc. 15K warrior, maxed aa, 22 epic 1.5's. I had quick burns but not long burns up – did it no problem, no deaths, though used divine intervention on all 4 clerics- damage is very spikey. Probably easier than Quarm, but more defined by your tank. 14% shielding, 25% avoid, 15khp, 3kac



RCOD: Lirah the Bridgekeeper ---> I tried once while passing through early on (65, 400ish AA, 1-6 epic 1.5's, don't quite remember) and with AA's and full burns, got to 8%. Tried again at 70, 700AA on group 1, 600AA on the rest, and 22 epic 1.5's, and the fight was a totally trivial push over.



MPG Group Trial: Fear ---> I did this towards the end of Elementals and it was bizarrely trivially easy; even my last group, with ranger-cleric-bard-necro-mnk-druid, no slower, no real tank, had no real problems; cleric ran OOM towards the end but was probably over healing. This is definitely easier than any given DoN group task. All groups were elemental geared; all groups have 700ish AA, which gets you basically everything that matters.

MPG Group Trial: Subversion ---> I did this after my PoTime run. The first part, chests and keeping mobs dead, was easy in the first group. The boss, the adds, and the constantly respawning mobs were a lot harder. Second group chests stopped spawning and I didn't realize the chests had spawned over top each other all in one spot, so I ran out of time. The group was mid boss fight when I failed. Group 3 got it, but yeah, the boss fight is really tough. Group 4 wiped with 10% left on the boss. Group 2 retried it, but autoloot caused me to finish it before I was ready, and the cleric died on pull. I evacced and was going to try to rez the cleric, but it didn't let me be outside the arena for more than 10 seconds.

MPG Group Trial: Ingenuity ---> I did this after my PoTime run. Group 1 had the cleric take agro and die and then win anyways; without being able to damage the main guy until I looted things, holding agro was terrible. Group 2 got it, but had to staunch the cleric. Group 3 had it no problem; SK harmtouch was a good sized carry on that one. Group 4 I didn't even try.

MPG Group Trial: Destruction ---> I did this after my PoTime run. This one is pretty easy – kill 20 mobs, then they all despawn and the boss spawns. No group had trouble with it.

MPG Group Trial: Efficiency ---> I did this after my PoTime run. This one was also very easy; kill 3 waves of 4 mobs then the boss. No group had trouble with it.

MPG Group Trial: Weaponry ---> I was miles off, with even my most powerful group. I need to save a few of each weapon types on every melee and set up swaps. The mobs didn't do much DPS, but huge HP sponges.



DoN: Fanning the Flames ---> Attempted before my PoTime run and it was a slaughter. Got to maybe 80% of the second phase. Tried again after PoTime and after Ikkinz Raids and MPG group trials, and after 3 primals clears...characters have 3-4 Type8 items on average. Wiped at 30% with Infusion, Intensity, and Armor, and 11 Whorls up. Maybe I kill the Whorls? Maybe if I had automezz on? It seems like by the time I have enough power to kill this mob I'll be geared past him.

DoN: Guardian of the Sands: Not too bad; burn the mob down, mezz/offtank the adds. Did before I had PoTime access without too much trouble.

 

Stage 8: Uqua

Ikkinz Raid 4: Honestly not that bad; the second to final fight I had a partial wipe; the guy with the key (warrior) died and the remaining characters got trapped in there. I rebuffed and cleared back in; the final fight was comparatively easy since the adds despawned.

Riwwi: Taskmistress Krizz ---> Never bothered.

Uqua, the Ocean God Chantry ----> Cleared; everyone had maxxed AA, 3 time clears and some other Tier8 loot; 1 run of each Ikkinz group/raid except 4, a couple primals/a couple summoners rings; most characters have 5-10 items with 150-200hp/mana, the rest elemental tier loot, but my tanks are pretty geared out; my warrior at 15k life. 22 epic 1.'5s complete, 22 Tier2 OoW breastplates for what that's worth.


Clearing it was no big deal, left mini named was easy, right mini named with the AE mana drain and drunkenness proc was tough; going to have to level alcohol tolerance on my warrior. Basically everyone ended up out of mana and one character died, but I got it. Golem was easy. Final battle I was dreading, and was very hard; I killed the Golem and got Vrex down to 82%, killed the 12 adds, but the 2 adds that AE got a bunch of characters with mana drain. I had my rogue and necro camped down the hallway to save the raid if I wiped, but I was able to finish it off, but had lots of characters die, was battle rezzing, etc. I didn't use armor, infusion, or intensity though.

 

Stay tuned for thoughts on Stage 9: Qvic

Stage 9 (~Qvic): Cragbeast Queen was missing from all lists, so added here. These mobs drop items in the 200-240hp/mana range.

Inktu'ta, the Unmasked Chapel ---> I tried right after Ikkinz Raid 4; I got the first 2 events but couldn't kite the cursebearers ; apparently you can just nuke them down. My warrior is nearing 16k life, SK/Paladin 14k, and everyone else 12-13k, even the casters. Enchanter is lowest at 11.5khp. I did the first 2 events easy repeatedly, cursebearers might be impossible with 24. Next attempt I might try rooting them, since they aren't immune to root.


Qvic: Cynosure Kvanjji ---> Bizarrely trivial fight. Nothing does any real damage – it takes a long time, but a bard singing Chorus of whtaever can out do the mana drain.

Qvic: Iqthinxa Karnkvi ----> Did my first attempt immediately after Ikkinz4 and the Inktu`ta attempt. I had the 3 Ravs and killed them 10% at a time, and I had the last one down to 5% when I wiped – healers out of mana. Might be better off killing them one at a time despite the power up. Luckily, the event didn't reset, and I was able to run back. Iqthinxa herself does no damage and is totally trivial. Okay; after killing a few times, the better strategy is to go inside the enclosure, kill Iqthinxa to 75%, kill the Ravs one at a time, then pull the last one out, kill it, then med up and kill Iqthinxa. Got deathless with very few upgrades from the first kill.



Txevu: Aneuk Nyrt Ymosa

Txevu: Aneuk Rilst Uskst

Txevu: Ixt Kial Ivesi

Txevu: Ixt Quall Nalnn

Natimbi: Cragbeast Queen ---> Did after my 3rd PoTime clear. Pretty easy ---> easier than Quarm, I'd guess.

 

Stage 10 (~Txevu): I removed content that isn't out on PEQ.

Ruined City of Dranik: Battlemaster Rhorious

Ruined City of Dranik: Zun`Muram Volklana

Txevu: Ancient Cragbeast Matriarch

Txevu: High Priest Nkosi Bakari

Txevu: Ikaav Nysf Lleiv

Txevu: Ixt Hsek Syat

Circle of Drakes: Probably about this quality of loot. This is so trivially easy, it can be done with 24 elemental geared characters for sure.

 

Stage 11 (~Kessdona/Rikkukin): I removed content that isn't out on PEQ.

Riftseeker's: Chailak ---> Pretty easy for the tier. Killed while I was mostly at PoTime/Uqua tier still; maxed AA, 22 epic 1.5's, half my characters still have 50-75% elemental tier slots. Just not that hard. Didn't use armor/intensity/infusion. Second attempt was easier.

Riftseeker's: Feratha ---> Trickier than Chailik, The shadowstep was messy, ate some of my tanks. Used armor and intensity and all burns, but still wasn't that hard. Once I knew what was going on, second attempts were trivial.


Txevu: Ukun Bloodfeaster

Txevu: Zun`Muram Tkarish Zyk
Accursed Nest: T`Shara

Rikkukin: My first attempt I got him to 5% but I didn't know what I was doing. My second attempt killed deathless; Warrior at 16khp, SK/Pal 15k, hybrids 13k, casters 12k; most characters have about 50% time+ gear, 50%elemental+ gear; I've done Qvic armor on 8 characters completed. Third attempt was easy; 1 staunch.

Kessdona: 15/24 Qvic Armor completed, most characters mostly have items in the 160-240 range, some lingering elemental tier items and worse here and there. Max AA's, 22 epic 1.5's, 50% of chaos runes (the ones that matter), and most OoW spells. Tier 4 DoN AA on all characters. Warrior with double tribute is 16.5k life, 3k AC, 33shield, 45 avoid. Pal and SK are both at 15.5k, 25ish shield, 30ish avoid. Clerics and Hybrid melee are 13-13.5khp; casters are 12-12.5khp and basically everyone has 11-12k mana. Used all vet AA's.

Lost 5 chars; War-Ber-SK-Ranger-Necro. I clicked off levitate to make room for infusion, which seems like a mistake with the fling, I'll have to try something else for the next attempt. It was pretty doable though; all clerics ended with 50% mana. Used all burns, infusion, intensity, armor, but no staunches.

 

Stay tuned for thoughts on Stage 12: MPG/Tacvi

 

Stay tuned for thoughts on Stage 13: Anguish

 

Whew. I have to say you're much more thorough than my half-assed "I'll do most things by myself" attitude.

I look forward to reading these.... when I have a long moment to do so.

 

Wow...just wow. Thank you, CE2.

 

I'll leave my tradeskill guide here too;

Various quests require tradeskills to various levels, so I'm just going to put easy routes for each tradeskill here in this thread for people to reference; preference will be for 1) vendor only things and then 2) farms that give experience / are fast. A lot of this comes from various tradeskill guides of various eras on the internet, but I'm checking recipes on PEQ to make sure everything works here. I'm also checking for drops, because a lot of these sites assume you can go to the bazaar and buy tradeskill materials, but that's not really a thing on PEQ.

Alchemy: Shaman only

Elixir of Greater Concentration --- 244, all easily vendor sold components.
From there, save Nodding Blue Lilies (Sebilis, Crypt of Decay), Deepwater Ink (PoWater, Kedge, Siren's Grotto) and that'll get you to 300. I was able to buy some of these by the 100's from people.

Baking:
Fishrolls to 135 ---> all easily vendor sold components
After that, you're out of luck. The easiest to me is lettuce + carrot + turnip (vendor purchased) ---> thousands of vegetable oils ---> dressing + loaf of bred + mephit meat ---> mephit sandwhiches to 276. If you do planar progression and put mephit meat on keep, you'll probably get there.

Blacksmithing:
Banded Mail to 115 ---> All easily vendor sold components
Ornate Platinum Chain Mail to 162 ---> All easily vendor sold components
Enchanted Velium bits to 222 ---> Upper velketors still gives experience at 65 (but maybe not 70) and you can probably farm enough to get from 162 to 222 in a couple hours.
222---282 ---> Various magnetic armor, to magnetic breastplate ---> you'll have damaged magnetic components from various OoW zones, hang onto them.

Brewing:
Minotaur Hero's Brew 1--->248 ---> All easily vendor sold components. You could start somewhere lower trivial, but with a TV show on a second monitor, why bother?
Brut Champagne ---> 335 --- All easily vendor sold components.

Fletching:
This one is easy; it's all vendor all the way; pick some arrows at skill increments you like.
Class 4 Woodpoint to 122
Class 6 Woodpoint to 202
Rough Shadewood Compound Bow to 282

Jewellery Making:
Once again a very easy one;
Jaded Electrum Bracelet to 106
Fire Emerald Gold Bracelet to 202
Platinum Ruby Veil 279
After that, you're buying high end gems; I was able to easily round up 500 blue diamonds/diamonds checking vendors in bazaar, guild hall, poknowledge and tranquility.

Make Poison (Rogue only)
This one is remarkably easy – it took 10,000 plat and a few hours to get to 275; https://www.eqprogression.com/poisonmaking/

Pottery:
Another easy one; vendor only
Unfired medium bowls to 122
Unfired casserole dish to 199
Unfired star ruby encrusted stein to 300

Research:
See this thread; https://www.projecteq.net/forums/index.php?threads/research-trivial-lists.17927/

Tailoring:
Woven Mandrake to 66 ---> vendor only
Picnic Baskets to 76 ---> vendor only
Crystalline Silk to 131 ---> Velketor's gives exp at 65, and mass pulls can result in a lot of silk pretty fast. Using a Cleric, SK or Paladin to pull with divine aura also means you can ignore the fall

After that: I tried Rockhoppers in Dawnshroud, but only got 4-6 usable hides per 12 minute pull.

I got another great suggestion from someone else, and that's Muramite Residue + Bonechips – if you're doing Kod`Taz progression you'll get lots of muramite residue, and a necromancer can turn meat into bonechips 20 at a time, so that'll get you to 202 ---> That + shears lets you do ethereal silk, which gets you to 212, which hopefully is high enough.

After that my best suggestion is to save hynid hides, hynid blood, and cragbeast skins and make bags from when you're doing GoD progression.

It is probably worth it to make a geerlok sewing contraption. It requires an easy common drop and vendor components. Alternatively, farm Shei vintras for the shears.

Tinkering:
Stalking Probes to 102 ---> Vendor only
Geerlok Automated Hammer to 215 ---> Vendor only + small bricks of Acrylia from inner acrylia – they drop a lot, fast.

From there; Plane of Innovation or Plane of Fire/Water drops will do it.

 

Updated to stage 11 with my Kessdona and Riddukin kills.

 

Love reading the notes and seeing the updates. I think there is an error in the uqua section.. says you have 22 completed T2 oow BP.

Those are tokens that drop of AMV and OMM in anguish. Maybe you meant something different?

 

Yep, I mean Tier 1; my apologies. The Muramite Elder Sceptre from Tiorpat/Velkitorkin