70 Bst with 65 Dru - where to hunt?

Tanot · May 29, 2008, 03:15:19 PM

Hi all

I have recently returned to EQ. I have a 65 druid with less than 50 aa's (don't laugh!) and around 5.8k mana and the use of a 70 beastlord with around 270AAs and 6.6k ish HP/Mana - these are unbuffed numbers by the way (thank god!). My plan is to get the druid to 70 and get him some AAs on the way so that I can have a fun duo. Could anybody tell me where the best place to take them for XP would be? I'd also like to know what sort of content they could handle at the moment and when they are both 70. As it stands I'm not really using the BL and root/dotting in PoFire with the druid but it is pretty slow as I have nowhere near the mana pool to quad in fire.

Any ideas?

Khauruk · May 29, 2008, 04:10:14 PM

Fire C1 or maybe Sunderrock Springs (might be a bit hard, but the druid's atk debuffs will land there). BoT if you can get an uncamped portion should still be decent xp as well, esp. on the druid. PoValor might be good too, as you won't need to heal too much, and the mobs have fewer hitpoints.

Look to see how AA xp is on druid now...if it's good, it would be worthwhile to get as many healing AAs as you can get at 65. I'd work on getting Radiant Cure 1, Exodus, Healing Gift and Adept line maxed to level, Innate Enlightenment (? on name...the one which raises wis cap), and some of the mana regen AAs. Good time to work on basic defensives as well.

The only other good option imo is to level druid to 68 (new heal, calm, debuffs, lion's strength, timed invis spells), and then work on AAs.

I'd also level the Beastlord to 71 if you're capable...it's a huge dps increase just from dinging.

Tanot · May 29, 2008, 04:50:33 PM

Thanks for the reply Khauruk :-)

Would the BST be able to "tank" the trash in PoF then? I'm quite happy with the XP in PoF on the druid but it is pretty slow and obviously I'd imagine it would be seriously quicker with the BST involved as well.

The druid has SCM3, Exodus (first thing I bought after SCM3, I like being able to run away!) and level 1 in a few of the PoP AAs like HG, HA,SCF, ND, CS etc. He also has CritAfflic1 (uber I know :wink:) + innate camo so I'll follow your advice and get him up to HA3 HG3 etc. I'm capped on WIS and STA so enlightenment might not be a bad idea although my caps will obviously go up as I level to 70.

I'm getting around 12%AA per kill in PoF solo, if I run a lesson I can just about get 2AA before it wears out if I'm lucky with mob placement, but quite a lot of the trash near zone in (haven't been brave enough to head to the castle yet!) is runspeed immune so I have to be very selective as to what I pull so that can slow me down a lot - would make a huge difference if I could fight the RS immune mobs using the BST as well.

On the PoValor thing, I think I read somewhere since I came back that they changed the way AAxp works now so that if the mobs are light blue to the highest group member then it seriously affects the AAxp that you get. I'm guessing that the PoV mobs would be lb to a 70? I assume they would still be good for regular XP though?

Khauruk · May 29, 2008, 05:21:18 PM

The first castle is to a large extent single pullable (probably almost all singles w/ harmony), and there's large safe areas inside of it...worth your time to camp in there instead of the zone in). Also, if you have weapons on the Beastlord w/ Chaotic Strike augs, the clerics will almost never land a heal on themselves. It's also much easier to land slow there vs. C2.

Valor - been too long, dunno. But, though less AAxp per kill, the faster kills might make it worthwhile.

At level 76, when I started raising my druid's WIS cap, I was shocked to see that it was over 100mana for the 5points of +WIS. Twas very nice. It obviously will be less at 65, but I'm guessing it'll still work very nicely for mana increase. I'm talking about the one that specifically raises the cap for WIS, not the all stat increase one - iirc, it was much cheaper than Planar Power is.

You're at level 1 actually in Luclin AAs :). But yeah...max those all out through PoP I'd say - after that point, the returns per AA point spent usually drop a lot. You can check thedruidsgrove or Sammana's druid forums for more details on what/where to spend them.

PoF is essentially the best non-hotzone xp in the game through level 70 or so, due to amazingly fast kills and low damage output (beats the heck out of RSS w/ lower groups)...dunno how it'll compare to BoT,but I'd milk it as much as I can.

Tanot · May 29, 2008, 08:09:26 PM

Thanks for the reply again mate - no need to make me feel even more inadequate by pointing out I'm not even into the PoP AAs yet! :wink:

Is the first castle you are referring to what is marked as Fort in this map? http://www.eqatlas.com/planes/burninglandsmap.html - I might give it a go tonight. Just to double check, the BST will be able to go toe to toe with the mobs in PoF? Don't fancy getting killed as nobody on my list of friendly clerics seem to log on any more :cry:

Would anything later than PoP be even vaguely duoable with what I've got? I left a month or two after DoN came out and I could use quite a few items from the vendor on the dru but I don't have any way of getting crystals - I remember trying to solo the first areas in DoN (might have been instanced missions, can't remember) and having my ass handed to me (on the dru by itself mind and he was probably 64 at the time). I have another account of my own with a load of lowbies on it that I could use to get the missions in other expansions if it is worth doing it. I used to do a bit of root/Dotting at the Vxed zone line but although the XP per kill was good, it was an instant death sentence to the druid (solo) if the mob warped onto him, which unfortunately happened a lot.

Another quick question, you referred to the BST's DPS changing significantly if he levels to 71. Just interested in the mechanics behind this (I've always been into the game mechanics) - is it because of spells or some sort of ability he would get at 71 or is there some innate boost the devs built into the 70s? Would this cause the whole of PoP to become light blue?

Khauruk · May 29, 2008, 08:53:59 PM

Yeah, the fort is it - you can stand pretty much right in the middle and never agro anything.

71 - BSTs get innate double attack. It's only a few points, but due to the way that the game's formula works, it adds up to a reasonable %age (level is factored into the equation...so 5 points of DA at 70 is worth more than 50 points at lvl 20). You can even delevel back to 70 (to keep toons w/in closer level range) after you get it, and it won't go away.

DoN - lavaspinners lair missions might be doable once you get the druid some AAs. If you keep the group's avg. level below 68 iirc, the mobs hit for 400s or so. After 68, they were hitting for 600. It's been a long long time, but that's about what I recall. You'll need a third toon that's at least lvl60 (everybody needs to be w/in a 10 level window). Problem is, unless you have some form of CC, you need to be able to handle 2-3 at any point.

Ascent missions might be a bit better - hit a bit harder, but easier to pull w/ druid harmony (unsure of mob levels, will need to check on that) as it's outdoor. Again, there'll be some CC/pulling needed, or will be tanking multiples.

It might be easier to farm items for pp to buy crystals - keep away from gear, and only get foci if needed. But at that point, the SoF non-visible slot items might be often cheaper for both toons, leaving weapon proc augs about all that's useful for the Beastlord, and HP/mana augs for both (and might be better to farm hotzone augs at that point).

What server are you on, btw?

Sharrien · May 29, 2008, 09:21:29 PM

Might be a bit of a stretch, but you could do the Monkey Island tasks in The Buried Sea. I was doing them with my beast/mage duo at lvl 73 very easily with the beast tanking. I found the mobs to have few hp for their level and decent xp, plus nothing summons except for some of the higher level named mobs on the more difficult islands. Druid healing should enable you to tank there at lvl 70. Doing these tasks (sub-tasks for Jonas Skeletal Hand) also give pirate faction so you can buy Bark at the Moon at lvl 75.

Tanot · June 04, 2008, 04:03:26 PM

Hi guys thanks for the replies - sorry been out of town for a few days. I'm over on AB and loving getting back into the game.

This is going to sound unbelievable but my mate managed to somewhat get the level of his beast wrong - it is only 66! Maybe somebody has been sac'ing it since he was last playing it :wink: Anyway I'm not complaining as it is really useful to have another reasonably high level char to play - although somebody referred to me as a newb last night, how times have changed!

I'm guess from that I will be concentrating more on the PoV side of things rather than the PoF side of things although I was thinking of maybe just using the BST for extra DPS via the DoTs - not sure if the DPS increase of this (in terms of time/kill) would make up for the 1/2ing of XP? Still I guess I need to get both XP now so shouldn't really be worrying about this too much. Any other suggestions for duoable zones with 65Dru/66Bst? Bst has pretty much all of the spells up to 66 bar some of the old Velious(think from there) spells like Acumen + Growl of the Leopard and the Calliav spells - Druid has all spells required. Looking to drag them towards 70 slowly but mainly concentrating on getting their AA count up.

Sorry if I shouldn't ask this kind of question in this forum but I already have this post going so I'll do it anyway! On the equipment side of things, I had a bit of a blowout on the bazaar for the BST last night and got her up to 7.3k HP 5.5k mana and around 1300AC - this is "self-buffed" with relevant bst/dru buffs (loving the beast buffs on my dru as well 8-) ). Anyway, she was dual wielding Savage Platinum Fists with Radiant Permafrost aug main hand + Epic 1.0 offhand (no aug). I found some Dawnlight Fistwraps for 2.5k (how cheap is that!) which I've equipped in MH and bagged the Savage Platinum Fists for the meanwhile. I was thinking of moving the Permafrost aug to the wraps - that a good idea or would I be better going for something else - e.g. the Chaotic Strike aug that Khauruk mentioned? I could then put the Permafrost in the epic 1.0 maybe. I've found the Beastlord DPS calc (fantastic resource) but I'm not really sure of other weapons I can plug in there for comparison.

Leading on from that, should I stick with the epic in OH for the meanwhile? I noticed it has 40% haste on it which I'm assuming is too good to bag? I saw a cloak (I think) in the bank on the char with 30% haste on it but the stats were terrible and I have an OK cloak at the moment (Fearsome Midnight Cloak).

Anyway lots of questions bubbling up in my mind but I'll stick with these for the moment!

Khauruk · June 04, 2008, 05:05:55 PM

Dump the epic, and find a new source of haste...either one of the many bazaarable, or there's an aug you can buy from Dragons of Norrath merchants (in Lavastorm Mountains) with Radiant Crystals (Petrified Pine Sap, costs 180 crystals, http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=82066 ), which might be worthwhile depending on prices of Radiant Crystals in the bazaar.

Either way, find a way to bank the 1.0. There's no good situation to be using it still. Lots of good haste belts are out there from recent expansions as well.

Tanot · June 04, 2008, 05:18:29 PM

Crystals were 40-50pp a week ago but they seem to have shot up to 100pp - maybe to do with supply and demand with new players coming back. Anyway, too much for me at the moment!

I'll take a look into belt options - wearing Girdle of Focus at the moment which is one of the better items on the char but can no doubt be improved. What about a couple of suggestions to replace the epic OH? Also, some advice on augs would be great. There seems to be huge amounts of choice - stuns, straight DD, lifetaps etc. Not sure what is the best route to go - is the Permafrost aug still relatively OK?

Tiroon · June 05, 2008, 06:18:00 AM

Quote from: Tanot on May 29, 2008, 04:50:33 PM
On the PoValor thing, I think I read somewhere since I came back that they changed the way AAxp works now so that if the mobs are light blue to the highest group member then it seriously affects the AAxp that you get. I'm guessing that the PoV mobs would be lb to a 70? I assume they would still be good for regular XP though?

The mobs being light blue isn't problematic by itself. You can get very nice AA XP off light blues. When going after AA's do it with a duo or group where all toons have the same level or, at least, are very close in level.