In the EQL beta, I specifically chose a class combination I knew I would not be playing when the game went live — a gnome mage, with rogue, druid and finally enchanter mixed in. I did that to knock myself out of my comfort zone, at least a little. Because I did play a gnome mage in EQ classic; was one of my many alts, who mainly existed to loot rotting raid gear. Everyone had alts like that. And rogue was my main for awhile, and before that, druid; about the only class I didn’t play back then was enchanter.
So I did this time, and it absolutely shocked me and changed everything about what I wanted to play.
I am duoing with my partner, Kasul, and I wanted to make sure that whatever I played, was compatible with what he played. He played a ranger/shaman in beta, with a bard for his third class and he was shocked, too, by what he discovered.
He really liked the bard, and I really liked the enchanter, and so for both of us, we knew we’d have to readjust what we thought we wanted.
That above isn’t my live character, btw. Hence the random name.
We had a couple of ground rules. One, we preferred to play on the good side, and so we both needed to pick races that were, well, neutral if not outright good. We would need to ensure that we could access trainers for our particular classes. And we would need to fill all the required roles in a group by ourselves; tanking, heals, dps, buffs, debuffs.
I came into this wanting to play a Dark Elf Shadow Knight, but that broke a couple of rules. Now, in EQL, any race can be any class, even evil classes. I would have preferred to play a halfling, but with their low strength, halflings aren’t fantastic tanks. The best tanks are Ogres, due to their melee stun immunity, but if you’re not going to be an ogre, you at least need to be strong enough to carry your gear.
That really left only humans and dwarfs, for good side races. Sure, you can put armor on the others, but their strengths are not… strength.
So that was the race decided: Dwarf. Primary class: Cleric. Secondary class: Shadow Knight.
Next up: decide where I could train as a Shadow Knight. It’s not something to worry about right away; SKs aren’t big on spells early on, and the game gives you all your non-research spells for free up to level 20. But still, it would be nice.
I thought I would try the SK guild in the Qeynos Aqueduct. It took me an hour to find my way through that maze, and then they instantly killed me — they don’t like worshippers of Brell Serillis there, apparently. Bertox or nothing. So Qeynos was right out. I suspected the same fate awaited me in Freeport, too. Kasul suggested talking to the SK guildmaster in New Sebilis, just outside Freeport, in North Ro. Well, I did try, and they wouldn’t talk to me either — but at least they didn’t try to kill me. I guess there’s an easy quest to raise faction with them.
So the new idea is to gather the metal bits or whatever while leveling to 20, then get amiable to them and get the necessary training and spells past 20, while using the cleric guild in Kaladim to keep current with spells for the Cleric side.
Now, for the third class. Both Kasul and I want ports, so he’s going for wizard, and I’m going for druid. Cleric totally outstrips druid in every way that counts, except for ports and damage shields. Druids also have decent nukes, especially elemental ones, so I’ll have access to those while leveling for the ports. You get the last of them in the late 20s, definitely by level 30.
Once that happens, Kasul drops wizard for bard, and I drop druid for enchanter. And then it’s pet time; Kasul has doggy-dog, and I’ll have whatever looks good on the shelf. I enchanted in Crushbone and Befallen and it worked out so well. Mage nukes were very, very good. But I kinda like what charmed pets can do. And clerics have some very good nukes, too. And I think the enchanter rune can use AAs so it can be recast without constantly taking gems, so I’m tanking and invulnerable some of the time, pet is hacking away, everyone is healed, everything is slowed and tashed, bard is dotting things down. It should be pretty nice.
We shall see… but I think it’s going to be fun.
