One of my long term goals in EverQuest Legends was to get, for all of my EQL three-class combos, the prep work done for their epic weapons, the quests for which will arrive sometime this coming winter when the Kunark expansion drops.
My first class combo to max level was the Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter combo. The cleric epic is a weapon that gives free resurrections — useless in EQL. I don’t know what the enchanter one does for you, as the chance I’d use it is slim. The warrior epic is glowing swords that can combine to form one double-glowing two handed swords, and it is this I’m interested in. I never did finish the warrior epic in OG EverQuest.
My secondary combo is Paladin/Monk/Enchanter. Again, not sure I need whatever the Enchanter epic can give me. I’ll have to look into it once it goes live in case there’s an exaltation I can get from it. The Monk Celestial Fists are actually cool weapons, and I may end up doing that one.
But the Paladin epic — the Fiery Defender — requires the pre-epic — the Fiery Avenger — to be done first. And that’s what I got done.
I started the weekend out at level 28 on this combo. The final fight is against a lich in EverFrost for which a raid is recommended (or a solid group of level 60s). The final turn-in is in the Plane of Sky, so, I would need to get to level 46 at a minimum.
The quest also requires two other Paladin swords; the Ghoulbane, for which I sacrificed some of my live frog faction in Lower Guk farming the froglock shin lord; and the Soulfire, the quest that led to me and Kasul tanking our Freeport Militia faction for killing their leader, Sir Lucan D’Lere. But those were done, and I’d repaired my faction with them while also maxing my faction with the Erudin Deepwater Knights, which would be key.
But first I needed to get 18 levels.
With the double xp weekend in full swing, my plan was simply Mistmoore to level 30, Lower Guk to 46.
What I did instead was Mistmoore to 30, LGuk to 43, the Hole for a disastrous few kills, Nagafen’s Lair to 46 doing the Efreeti-Imp farm, same farm I used to get the Warrior combo to 46.
Mistmoore was unsatisfying because all the really cool Paladin powers only activate against the undead, and Mistmoore is only undead at night. This made timing Mistmoore excursions important, and I’d always be seeing my DPS drop off substantially when the sun rose. (I run a parser all the time; I can see when my DPS takes a hit).
I went to Lower Guk somewhat earlier than I’d planned, but everything I was interested in killing was undead. I killed fast and also furiously, taking occasional breathers to learn new spells and rearrange my buffs. By the time I hit 43, though, only the bosses were giving me any real experience and I was forced to look elsewhere.
I had not been to the Hole aside from the Master Yael raid in who knows how long. I jumped into the Hole from Paineel and landed in the pool of water they have for jumpers. They should write “Call 988!” on the wall there. There was a flighty fiend I charmed; blue, I had hopes. I remembered the undead castle near the bottom of the Hole where we used to XP back in the day, but that was all red to me. There were a lot of red mobs everywhere. Of course, back in the day I was in a group; a group would have no problem with any of this stuff. Solo, that’s different. I worked my way slowly up to the old ruins of Paineel, a mix of yellows and reds. The lack of a charm spell that could work on the red mobs (would not receive until level 46) made my progress slow, and eventually just decided to go to Sol B.
It’s a pretty easy farm, Sol B imps. Some of them are 46 or below, the limit of the charm spell I had at the time. The monk’s DPS made them quick to die, and before long, I made the level I needed.
Just two steps to go.
I’d already gotten the two books I needed from Nagafen and Vox; I needed to turn them in to a bartender in Neriak Commons. Thankfully, I am max ally with most of the Neriak inhabitants, but decided to illusion as a Dark Elf to make a good reception certain. This would come back to haunt me. The turn in went fine; I received the Book of Scale in return. This I had to hand into the Oracle in the Ocean of Tears. I was lucky that I hadn’t been farming his robe on this character. It would have been an awkward conversation. The Oracle gave me Miragul’s Phylactery.
Miragul is/was a raid mob in Everfrost Peaks. His whole deal is very much expanded in later EverQuest expansions. The Fiery Avenger walkthrough says to charm the lich and turn in the phylactery to spawn the raid version; kill him for his head and robe.
On my way through Everfrost Peaks to Miragul, still in Dark Elf illusion, I managed to aggro two of the high level roaming barbarian NPCs in the zone. They totally bought my DE-ness, but they were no match for my holy steed and I trained them to the frozen river that leads into Miragul’s caves and feigned death until they lost interest.
I found Miragul’s lich by casting Sense the Dead and killing the two icebone skeletons to reveal the wandering lich. He was kill on sight to me but did not attack. He was also not charmable. Not even with my upgraded level 46 charm.
So: this quest had differences. Throwing caution (and two dragon-looted books) to the wind, I just ran up behind the lich and ninja-handed him the phylactery. Old quest: he would refuse it, because he was KOS. New quest: he took it and spawned *Miragul.
*Miragul is a level 53 necromancer. In EverQuest Legends, any level 46 combo could take on a single classed necromancer, but this guy had a zillion hit points, befitting his legendary status as a raid mob. As a paladin, I have access to lower level cleric heals and the powerful Lay On Hands. As a monk, I have Mend. Every single one of these things was used to the max over the six minute fight. Since I’d thought I’d have to charm the lich form, I hadn’t charmed or summoned a pet, so I was the only DPS. It took a lot of time and stance dancing and quite a lot of low level cleric heals (Greater Healing, I think, was the one I had at the time), but I got it done.
The next and final step was to go to the Plane of Sky and do the turn in. I had the important Deepwater Knight faction. Turn in was to be on Island 4, the Pegasus island. Old Sky: some of the mobs saw through invisibility, and the Keeper of Sky pegasus would death touch you if she saw you (though she wasn’t initially up at the beginning of the raid). New Sky: nothing sees invis, nothing aggros the turn-in spot. I did run to the island and check to be sure a level 46 character could stand around without invisibility and not aggro the red con mobs circling it. Nope, no problem at all. I invised up, ran through all the islands until I got back to the starting island, went to the paladin djinn and ran through his dialog.
There’s another minor change; the djinn takes your 500pp and spawns the NPC on the fourth island directly. Previously, you’d pay the 500pp. another NPC would spawn, you’d talk to them, they’d give you a book, you give the book back and now you have five minutes to hand in the quest.
They advise having someone start the quest while the paladin waits in the fourth island, but it doesn’t take five minutes to run there from the quest island, not even one minute. I did it easily.
So, how good is the Fiery Avenger? I used a bunch of motes to level it up to the point that I could swap out its twin exaltations — a fire proc (about a hundred points, resisted by fire-resistant mobs), and Virtuous Bash, a worn exaltation that allows you to bash without a shield. Unfortunately for that, EQL has an AA that allows you to bash with any weapon, and I have this. So that’s more or less worthless in EverQuest Legends. It would be nice if the sword had some AC so it truly could act like a shield, but it does not.
What does it have?
Strength, Wisdom and Charisma. These are useful stats — wisdom for heals, strength for hitting things, charisma for charming things.
35 hit points and mana, less useful when paladin/cleric and enchanter buffs boost these so much, but it’s not nothing.
Ratio is > 1, which means it is in amazing weapon. Base damage is fairly good, so that would boost cleave damage in a hypothetical PAL/WAR combo — Paladins don’t get cleave. I have found cleave damage is an important component of warrior damage. Paladins do get the spell blade invocation, which adds a different kind of damage that brings them up to warrior standards. The monk gets triple attack, which would be truly devastating with the Fiery Avenger.
Small saves against all magical damage types; again, not nothing.
Above is a comparison of my warrior combo wielding the Fangol 2H axe from Sky; right is the paladin combo wielding the Fiery Avenger. Warrior at 50, paladin at 46 so the paladin stats are a little lower. Obviously the gear is different, as I’ve been leveling up the warrior gear and just started on paladin. Neither class is buffed.
All of HP, Mana, Endurance, AC and Attack are lower on the Paladin side, substantially lower, though in both cases, AC is over the soft cap. Things are little better on the stats and saves. All the regens are higher on the paladin, and the equipment weight is lower on the paladin, as you’d expect in a character that is also a monk.
The skills are very different; monk evades more, monk gets triple attack, monk gets feign death, the charisma of the combo is higher making it easier to charm and mez mobs. The calculation becomes, can the monk skills make up for the lack of stats?
Using only self buffs, things aren’t really any better with the big numbers; the warrior combo wins every time. Paladin wins on strength and charisma, and others are close enough that the gap will probably close or swap when the pally combo hits 50. The saves are still poor (except, surprisingly, for magic) on the pally side, while the regens and attack speed are all superior for the paladin.
For these two combos, warrior+cleric has high health and the best heals to support it. Paladin hits harder and faster. The tradeoff is tanking vs damage.
With my second combo about to max out, I’m beginning to think about my third combo. I think Berserker/Monk/Druid would be amazing. Problem with that is, that I don’t have any of those unlocked as a primary class, so I literally cannot select that without unlocking one of those classes via $money or Sky quests. I have warrior, cleric and paladin unlocked at the moment.
So that’s where we stand, midway through the double XP weekend!
