Let me preface this by saying I really like this game. And more than that, I like the new boss mechanics. Are they perfect? No. Are there some kinks to work out? Sure. But overall, it makes the fights more interesting and I'm here for it.

That said let's get to the elephant: the Rik fight is not properly tuned for D0. I kill the golem, I try to root the son of a bitch and keep away, I've got motes in toot, I have the root AA, I burn through zombie phase, I have gear and I can clear D4 planes without issues. My mana and stamina give out long before my health does, and it makes no sense.

Rik simply requires too many resources at D0 to get your foot in the door. Period, full stop. The stamina and mana requirements are astronomical.

I'm certainly not playing the most meta trios, but I can do literally everything else well enough. If I have to play the exact same 3 or 4 trios everyone else plays exactly the same way everyone else plays them, what good is having classes?

This is an RPG, I want to play the character I want to play and so far it's been fine. Ideal? Probably not. But possible, yes. I'm not asking for the world, I'm asking for the game that was sold to me as solo-content-first can be done at the lowest difficulty without changing my entire gameplay to accomplish it.

I know I'm going to get down voted for this, but I'm really fucking frustrated with the current state of the fight. I've never asked for anything to get nerfed in my life, I've beaten a lot of difficult games, and I've spent a lot of time on my character. I just want to be able to do the content.

Haste only = Cloak of Flames +5 and Alacrity

Buffs: these are the ones that matter (haste, str, atk, and dex)

MAG buffs = Burnout III and Frenzied Burnout (10% overhaste, 20 Str, 200 Atk)

NEC buffs = Augment Death

BST Buffs = Yekan’s Quickening, Spiritual Brawn, Raging Strength, Spirit of Monkey, Hobble of Spirits (75 dex), Strike as One (30% Frenzy) and Spirit of Vermin XIII

ENC Buffs = Boon of the Garou and Swift Like the Wind

Shaman Buffs = Infusion of Spirit, Strength, Dexterity, Spirit Quickening, and Spirit of the Puma

Pet equipment, in order of preference based on slots: Belt of the Four Winds +5, Indicolite Breastplate, Indicolite Vambraces, Pauldrons of the Blue Sky, Indicolite Bracer.

All MAG/NEC pets were rank 9 w focus, BST/SHM/ENC pets were rank 10.

This doesn't use anything from Nektropos. Haven't had the time to farm but really wanting a handful of Doll's Fangs.

Running out of steam to do more tests. I want to do SHM and ENC but we'll see.

My thoughts:

This shows attack is a great stat to shoot for on pets. The stronger the enemy, the more important it is.

Water pet is frustrating. I never want to use it again. CT spamming mana detention and roots dropped its dps by 5-10 just realigning him. Had to restart a parse after he mana detonated and rooted a pet as well, and of course it was water.

Frenzied Burnout puts in great work! The basic mage pets aren’t that much better but that attack buff is huge.

Outside of minimizing the need to heal your pet, or if you wanna use Monster Summoning, 2h isn’t worth it. Too much of a loss and an equipment slot isn’t even worth mentioning.

Shadowknight pairs well w pets for the torrid exaltations. I almost always use SHD in my trios. If i can muster the energy I'll do parses on most pets w bloodmoon/dagas.

Obviously mixing these classes will result in stronger pets. I don’t think I have the patience to test the combos, but basically it’s best to pair w shaman, then mage, then beastlord for buffs. The others don’t provide specific benefits to pets.

I had unsubbed because my duoing partner quit. I have a few days left, so it gives me a chance to try the new zones before my sub expires.

I had a decent enough time playing it last night. I will probably log in again tonight. Possibly again on the weekend, but I’m pretty busy and it’s not good enough that I’m going to be making time to play it.

The fetch quest to get into the castle was fine. It’s not far off the kind of thing you see in later expansions. The writing was very poor, but EverQuest was never known for good writing. I ran around the lake zone a bit, but within 15 minutes or so I had seen everything. There was nothing particularly interesting about it.

Once I got into the castle, it was good enough to kill a little time. The keys and quests aren’t hard to figure out. I didn’t care too much about the bugs. I expect stuff like that will be ironed out quickly.

The library encounter was neat. The concentration of rares was good. The loot wasn’t overtuned, but I also found myself auto selling it without much thought. Overall, I wasn’t bored with the content, but I wasn’t all that engaged either.

One of the biggest issues I had was that the level design was very shallow. It felt like a C-tier Skyrim mod. Hallway, boxy room, hallway, boxy room, etc. A couple pieces of furniture thrown in.

The problem is that all this makes the extended wait for Kunark seem not worth it. If I had access to other expansions, Nektropos would literally be at the bottom of the list of zones I would be spending time in.

I don’t need new content if it’s just going to be mediocre and forgettable. I was max level when Kunark first dropped, and every time it’s dropped in a TLP. Veksar would be new to me. Droga would be new to me. VP, Crystal Caverns, Acrylia, a lot of PoP, these would all be new to me. Or at least, being able to slow crawl it rather than rushing through with a guild would be new.

I get that they have a small development team, but if they don’t have the resources to make custom content, then they shouldn’t be trying to force it. It’s okay to pivot to releasing expansions as they are and treating custom content as a side project. A product roadmap is not a bible, it‘s supposed to adapt over time.

If I could be leveling in Nurga for the first time, working on those epics that used to gated to me, or dungeon crawling Kaesora, and this add-on dropped, I’d be on here praising the dev team. As a side passion project it’s commendable. But as an indication of what they’re withholding existing content for, it’s disappointing.

Most discussion is about end-game stuff, naturally. Lots of people enjoy going right to soloing D4 planes, and that's a perfectly fine way to play, in fact I love that that's possible with EQL. And as much as I wish I could go back to original EQ like it was when it first came out, I love the improvements of EQL far too much to ever go back.

But anyone else enjoy just leveling up and exploring zones slowly? I love visiting the chessboard in Butcherblock, or leveling up in Ocean of Tears, and being excited when a Fine Steel 2H sword drops.

What rules do you like to set for yourself to help make the experience more like original EQ? Any tricks to avoid outpacing content or overgearing yourself to the point where higher-level drops are a disappointing downgrade instead of exciting?

I have been farming the undead in the basement on D4 all night.

I made a build just for it; Pal, Nec, Zerk. I got undead slow. +10 undead nuke. +10 life tap. +10 Cudgel. Pacify for splitting packs. The build rocks for this section. I am just clearing left and right.

But I am getting like 3 motes an hour. Something seems off.

I feel like I am just better off going back to Fear and DDD farming.

Which is a bummer, because I was enjoying the harder fights. I liked that I had to make a build to try to tackle it. But the motes just don't seem to be there for some reason.

Is anyone else seeing the same thing? Do I just have crazy bad rng tonight?

Cheers

So I got the basement key from the Juggernaut, then did miserably against the boss, going back to try later, but my question is this, is there a shorter way to get to the boss now with the key? Or do I still have to go through the bookcase and battle all the trash on my way back?

So let's try to make a walk through.. This is from the top of my head from last night so feel free to correct me.

First quest is getting the key

- talk to the guy in nektropos (bind yourself there)

- kill 55 fish in the lake

- give the ring back

- go felwhite and akanon

- Go back to the guy that started the quest

- go to pohate second floor

- gate back to finish the quest

Once in nektropos

- talk to the guy

- find the 4 shiny orbs and combine them on the piano

- go upstairs (good luck with librarian!) and find the lady

- go talk to the ghoul in first floor

- kill 4 sisters

- talk to the hand maiden

- kill last sister

- kill the captain

- secret door behind the bookshelf

- go basement and kill juggernaut and final boss

- finally kill the ghoul

- go back and kill the lady

- talk to the quest giver.

That's it right? I'm missing the quest for the necro off hand I heard it's in library

Anything else worth it beside farming the drops?

I have to admit it's nice and challenging for once

Ok, I killed Lord Nek and returned to Plimptos and said "end". He vanished and I got the yellow flavor text. My quest "The Betrayer" updated and shows as complete in my quest log. My quest "The Tragic Tale of House Everling" did not update and still shows as "Bring final death to Plimptos 0/1". When I return to Lady Everling, she won't talk to me when I hail her but if I "dead" and "confess" she will respond but not attack.

I have tried this sneaking, not sneaking, in public, and in both regular instance and dungeon crawl. Still stuck. I was hoping this morning's patch would fix it but it doesn't appear to have. I tried dropping and redoing "Tragic Tale" but it didn't fix it. I can't drop "The Betrayer" because it's completed. Judging by the Discord, I am not the only one with this issue.

Any tips?

WTF?

he is tough and thats fun!! thanks devs for this.

i tried with my main : RNG / Shm / nec and got smoked... paper tank its bad here.

then i went with SHD / SHM / ENCH and was better.. but couldnt go beyong 50% ran out of mana.

wondering what you guys using for him

few tricks i found :

Dont DOT him... the boss himself has litle hps.. not dotting allows for a more controled fight.
kill the golem ASAP.
when the zombies spawn, burn the boss, they despawn at certain % of his life.

with this is kinda doable,.. but my shd shm ench build is not really optimized so i think i need to either work on it or find a better loadout.

I did the entire nek castle quest, it leaves my quest journal and...that's it? No item? Nothing? Nobody can seem to answer this question. I ask in discord, in game. Seems like an easy question.

how do i get the enchanter spell color skew ( ae stun) ( cant fins it in the vendors 0 and do i have to do the quest " coin of tash" for tashania /

Thanks

Is there a trick for dealing with C'Rate's 'Feed' attack?

It does 32k damage on D0.

I tried interrupting (Bash and Skull Bash) many times, but it never takes.

I used my Paladin Divine Aura to get through one, but it recasts a few seconds later

Thanks

I didn't see it in the patch notes, was a pleasant surprise!

Also shows exactly what they do, amazing!

Slows are unaffected though.

I submitted a bug report, but I was curious if anyone else has run into this bug or knows a work around.

I teamed up with. Bard/Shaman in the basement for the Juggernaut and Lord fights. Those went well, so we went back to Plimptos. We were curious if we could both advance the quest, so we stayed grouped. When Plimptos spawned he said "End". His quest advanced, but mine didn't. Oh well, no big deal, we went our separate ways as I waited.

Now Plimptos won't respond to me when he respawns. My quest won't advance, I'm stuck on this step. Has anyone else run into this or know a fix for it?

Just wondering if there’s a way to unlock the new race without paying for it. I know there’s quests apart from the main questline, maybe completing all of those?

It's not just a bunch of squares with tunnels like new seb was. Layout is linear the first time you do it which forces you to see stuff, but subsequent runs arent which is good.

Quest is fine for entrance and sets up plot for a new god opposite of innorruk?

Gear is good so far, some interesting items

There are some bugs like the quest givers being scowling meaning you gotta sneak to do them.

Half dark elf's are butt, but what were we expecting?

It for sure won't last for two months, but the overall design is competent which is more than I was expecting.

​

shaman buffed btw

Im doing the quest the tragic tale of house everling and Im on the 3rd step. She wants me to bring final death to plimptos. I already ended him before but now she wants a final death. But I cant attack him and when I say end he dies but it does not complete the line item. What do I need to do to complete this step? Also, I think the bottom third of the quest journal is supposed to give a clue but its just blank.

update: She responds to "death" and "confess" but doesnt update the quest and doesnt become attackable. I tried dropping quest to redo it all but cannot be given the betrayer quest to redo it so Im just stuck on the same step in the main quest.

Im doing the tragic tale of house everling and im on the 2nd step - hear lady everlings plea. The first time I spoke to her she gave me a quest, and I completed it. Now I go back to her and she doesnt have anything to say to me. While sneaking Im indifferent, in the public zone, but she doesnt respond at all. Is it broken or what do i need to do to progress this quest?

edit: i got a little bit from her by saying "plimptos is dead" but it did not progress the quest and I dont know what else to say. Its a guessing game.

edit2: the word is SWEAR