EverQuest Legends: Playing to Lose

I meant to write a post, or something like it, back in June, before I even got in the EverQuest Legends pre-launch experience. It’s not a test of any sort, and you have to pay to get in, so: an experience that will be wiped away when the game goes live.

EverQuest Legends — EQL — is, despite what the devs imply — is almost nothing like the original EverQuest, as those of us who were there at the start remember. Aside from the changes, big and small, to the zones (we have the new Splitpaw and Runnyeye, at least, and Drelzna still doesn’t drop JBoots), the player characters themselves have the most dramatic changes.

In that every character starts out with two classes, gets a third at level 10, and can change any of those out for new ones until level 11, when they lock in their primary class for good. But past that, the Plane of Sky’s the limit. Mix and match. Try new things. You’ll have to return to the level of your lowest class whenever you change them, but leveling is fast and the loot levels up as well.

When this goes live, past the character wipe, I intended to play a Dark Elf Shadow Knight. I’ve been playing DESK’s or their nearest equivalents in RPGs for awhile now, making a clean break from the healers and rogues I’d been playing. With a druid for buffs and a bard for more buffs.

When EQL: The Las Vegas Advanced Preview Experience launched at the beginning of the month, I decided to do the exact opposite. Just go right out of my comfort zone. And make a gnomish mage, named “Mehve”. Mehve was the name of my very first EverQuest character, an Erudite Wizard. I soon switched to a Halfling Druid and left Mehve behind.

I was going to name my gnome Tsukino, after my EQ Live necro, but both that and Tsuki were not allowed, so I went with the name of my old deleted-but-not-forgotten wiz. (The naming reservation system didn’t allow Tsuki or Tsukino, presumably because they are the family name of Sailor Moon’s civilian identity (Tsukino Usagi is her full name — “Rabbit of the Moon”), but they allowed me to reserve Tipa, who is named after Rivervale’s Tipa Lighten. And they said naming after EQ NPCs wasn’t allowed…). Or maybe someone else got there before me.

Anyway, Mehve the Gnome Mage burst onto the scene. For her second class: I chose Bard.

MAG/BRD sucked. So I chose for her second class: Rogue. It was easy. Just made a new loadout, and instead of bard — rogue. I could have chosen any class (except, presumably, magician again, though I think a MAG/MAG would be really committing to the vanilla EverQuest experience).

So the concept here was: the pet would tank. I would stand behind the mob and stab. Rinse and repeat and we go along on our merry way.

What actually happened was: the pet would take aggro and die immediately and then I would be left tanking without a pet and then dying.

Dying isn’t so bad. I say this with Belghast’s death still fresh in my mind. He’s not suffering. If there is something after this, then he is with his wife and they are together again, without pain.

I was watching my son play Diablo IV today, and his character died, and there it was on the screen: “You Have Died”, in that Diablo font they have. I told my son that that was the most useless possible message to tell someone. “Oh, btw, you have died.” “Gee, thanks!” I reply, spectrally. “News I can use, that!”

Anyway. Dying in EverQuest means returning to the safe point in the zone where you met your untimely end, perfectly free to head back and see if that definition of insanity has some meat to it.

So, I switched strategies. I’d tank and do DPS, and the pet would wander around the zone, getting into trouble. Sometimes I’d get a bit of unexpected experience. Sometimes the pet would die and I’d make it onto some mob’s “must kill asap” list. It was sometime after that that I discovered the “/pet hold” alternate advancement ability that would prevent my pet from attacking anything without permission.

I’m wandering. Anyway. Me: tank. Pet: deeps. Rogues can be tanks in EQL, by the way. You get the Chaotic Stab AA for free; this lets you backstab from the front (in a move colloquially called “the Rivervale Reach-around”). And you can choose the “Evasive” stance, which absorbs 95% of the damage hitting you at the cost of endurance.

And so this: Me: tank, melee DPS, magic DPS. Pet: my Uno reverso to die in my place while I go fleeing for the zone line.

This actually worked out pretty well. I leveled up in Steamfont, where I don’t think I’d leveled before. All my characters past Etha were horribly twinked, and so my two gnomes just had awesome gear from day one and pretty much stayed in zones way past their normal ability to manage.

Steamfont was too crowded. Thankfully, EQL lets you create your own personal Steamfont (and any other zone as well). Each zone costs a charge, and you earn a charge for each hour you play. I think raid instances require more charges, but I am some distance from raiding so I don’t know for sure.

Along with getting your own private world, you can set the difficulty of that world from 0-4. “2” is apparently on par with actual classic EverQuest. “0” is easy mode. “4” is insanity. “0” has cruddy loot but is solo friendly. “4” has fantastic loot, but you better watch yourself.

On difficulty zero, I was able to clean up all of Steamfont (except Meldrath, the Minotaur Hero and the Minotaur Lord) by level 10, when I earned my third class — Druid. Mage buffs and direct damage spells are actually pretty good. With druid, I can mix and match from level to level to get the best buffs, damage shields, and whatnot. This let me try Steamfont at higher difficulties, but I just had one goal on my mind: Go to Crushbone, and wrest the Dragoon Dirk from Ambassador D’Vinn.

Not so easy. Creating my own private Crushbone just wasn’t working due to server issues, so I had to abandon that plan. I went instead (with my partner Kasul) and explored the first two floors of Befallen, a little bit of Runnyeye, some extended time in the Beholder Maze, and then Kasul and I grinded in the first few rooms of Najena’s Lair for several levels.

I then went back to Crushbone and was able to make my own private Difficulty IV Crushbone and farm the crud out of the throne room, leveling up my gear to insane levels, until it stopped giving me decent XP at level 20. I wanted 20 out of it nearly as bad as I wanted the Dirk (which dropped twice) or the Dwarven Ringmail Tunic (which dropped two or three times).

Kasul is off on business, so I continued exploring the third floor of Befallen and started on the bottom floor of Najena solo until my current level: 24. Just on the verge of Sol A and Upper Guk.

Anyway, MAG/ROG/DRU is not a meta class combination. The EverQuest Guides combo builder gives it a “B/C”. And yet I’m able to solo dungeons I couldn’t solo before level 35 back in the day. But it allowed me to crystallize what I want to play when it goes live.

Now, my partner Kasul is going to play a Barbarian Shaman, plus some other classes. (He went Shaman/Ranger/Bard in EQL). My Dark Elf SK idea won’t work; I’ll be KOS or at best dubious in most cities — including the evil cities like Oggok and Grobb. But I want it to. So maybe I can get there by a different way.

My current idea: Halfling PAL/ENC/DRU (and then CLR or BER-serker). I get the powerful undead spells, useful in Befallen, Najena and Lower Guk. Enchanter lets me illusion into Dark Elf for roleplay but also allows dealing with the crowds of mobs deeper in the dungeons, with the added bonus of being able to tank while trying to charm a new DPS pet. Druid for porting and buffs, and then cleric or berserker or monk or, heck, even rogue to get a little more DPS oomph, whatever seems reasonable.

Halfling means all good cities are open to me, no problem. Enchanter means all the evil ones are, too.

Let’s see what the combo builder thinks of this.

Actually lower than the meta ranking for the other combo. But the point I’m trying to make here is that you can pretty much play the combo you want, and you’re going to be okay. You’ll be able to solo Naggy and Vox and the planes; maybe not at D4, maybe just at D0, but you’re going to have the full EQL experience no matter what you choose.

So, about the planes. I did a fair amount of raiding back in the day, and one of the most fun things about those old raids were the death touches. Once you’re on a boss or mini-boss’s aggro list, you could be randomly stricken dead.

This would seem to make soling the planes difficult. You pull Terror, and… now you’re dead. Whomp whomp.

Turns out the vanilla planes don’t have bosses or minibosses. You can just go up there and do quests, farm gear, whatever. You need to make a raid instance for the bosses, and I think this does include Vox and Naggy, but don’t hold me to this. I still don’t know what happens if you try and solo the raid bosses, whether they still have death touch, because even with instant respawn, it’s going to take you more than 30 seconds to get buffed and back to the battle.

Well, more to discover. I’m still new to this. And having a lot of fun remembering the old, good times, and appreciating the changes.