I’d, somehow, forgotten that Kerrans — cat people — we’re going to go live along with the game a few days back. I was reminded by Game Jawn news coming out of ComicCon, and so, well, I had to take a look. Kasul and I played Miquo’te in FFXIV, so it would sort of be like playing the primitive, stone age ancestors of our Final Fantasy characters, maybe?
I’d had a couple of “must haves” for a race I’d choose. It had to be a good race, so we could go to all the good cities without getting in anyone’s hair. It had to have strength enough to carry plate armor.
The strongest races are Ogre, Troll and Barbarian. Barbarian would have been a possibility; my partner, Kasul, was going to recreate his EQ Classic character and be one, and it would have been nice to join him there. And maybe I should have.
Instead, I’d settled upon Dwarf. More strength than any elf, gnome, halfling or human; good aligned; I could start with Cleric and SK and get all the spells I would need from the lizards in North Ro. I was all set, until I got to the character creation screen and found out that Kerrans were stronger than dwarfs. Not up to the big folk strengths, but quite close.
Problem was that there are no Kerran clerics; they go in for druids and shaman only. And, they don’t believe in shadow knightery; not for them. Warriors or berserkers for the tanks.
I’d planned to be a Dwarf Cleric/Shadow Knight/Enchanter. Now I would be a Kerran Warrior/Cleric/Druid (and later enchanter for the third). I ran to South Qeynos to get bound near the cleric guild there to get the spells as I leveled, and I was set.
Kasul had gone with Barbarian Shaman/Ranger (and later Shaman/Ranger/Wizard replaced with Bard sometime in the future). His thought was to level up in the Karanas and gather pelts for tailoring. My plan was to go to Steamfont and camp the kobolds at difficulty 4 until they greyed out. I ended our first night with a bunch of leveled-up cloth armor, he ended it with a bunch of pelts and not so much armor. We were both level 8.
Tonight we started in Crushbone at difficulty 2. All the good stuff was yellow and red to us, but we started slow, farmed the taskmaster for awhile.
By the end of the night, we were level 10 and surviving massive pulls with reds mixed in that we really had no reason to believe we’d live through. Kasul’s debuffs were game changers. I was able to single pull a lot of stuff with Soothe, but when stuff just runs up after first running through and aggroing a bunch of mobs on the way then piles on you, you just do what you can do to survive.
EverQuest Legend’s stance dancing shines, here. By switching between Offensive, Defensive and Balanced stances, and Divine and Recovery invocations, I was able to keep my health and endurance in check (I was also chain-casting heals at certain points), Kasul was using Evasive stance to stay mostly untouched as he debuffed. We did die a couple of times, but we lived through other stuff that would have been a total party kill in EverQuest Classic.
One thing that really helped was the Alternate Advancement (AA) skill Steadfast Will, which gives a chance for a melee stun to not actually stun you, no matter which direction they are hitting you from. My Steadfast Will is up to 60%; all my AAs are going into it. Ogres get frontal stun immunity for free; they cannot be stunned from the front. Steadfast Will is better, eventually, because it doesn’t care what direction things are coming at you, but it is so expensive.
And yet so necessary.
As we geared up in Crushbone, we got more comfortable taking on red mobs. Taunting was a real issue, in that it took a lot of taunts to be heard over the deafening roar of Kasul’s debuffs and heals. I guess at some point I will get an AE taunt, and then AAs to make that unresistable — I remember these from EQ Classic — but that day is far away. I still have four more levels of Steadfast Will to get through.
I met all my goals for our first duo dungeon crawl. I got visible armor for all slots, so no longer naked. Got decent weapons and a shield. Got to level 11 and locked in the warrior primary class. And most important — I had a lot of fun doing it.
I think we may do Befallen tomorrow. Should be fun 🙂
