New player, looking for advice/groups

[Baros]

I’ve been wanting to get back into EQ, and I have a 21 Dwarf Paladin on Green (I played a little bit back in 2021, but it’s been years and I’m just relearning everything).

I’ve looked at the guides but I feel like I’m missing something - any mob I’ve tried soloing that could give me XP at this point hits incredibly hard and I’ve run to the zone lines countless times just to prevent the corpse run. I know that this game is punishing, but I feel like I’m just running around.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Eisai]

Paladin = #1 group tank / # 11 soloist

Best thing to do is mainline Xp through unrest, highkeep, etc groups.
If you have any cash you can invest in AC. What are you wearing? Small bronze drops in unrest but maybe you have better.

If you have to solo: typical paladin tactics are root & heal but that's not available til later.

So how's the gear? Weapons?

Are you out of mana when you run? What are you spending your mana on during the fight? What/where are you fighting?

Know about abjure healing?

[Baros]

I've got mostly small bronze gear from Unrest

Polished Granite Tomahawk in my main hand (I think this was gifted to me?) , crested mistmore shield in my offhand (also gifted?).

When I came back to the game (literally 2 days ago) I was outside Guk in Innothule Swamp.

Outside of reading some of the guides, I know nothing about the game. Was lucky during my first playthrough to have found groups in Unrest to get to my current level and some passersby offering me the weapon/shield.

[Eisai]

I have 117 chars 11 them are paladins. They are my favorite.

The best suggestion i can give is to join a large leveling guild. You absolutely cannot enjoy the peak of paladin performance nor purpose without grouping and a good leveling guild will give you access to a horde of players.

Do a "/who all 20 30" and ask some of the guilded players on that list about their guild. They obviously share your play schedule and will know about the leveling scene during those hours.
Your gear is pretty light for soloing, especially with your available spell set and your knowledge of the game.

Make friends. Lots of them. /friend anyone you enjoy playing with, especially healers. This game is hyper social and really great people, even the ones that aren't great players, are the main reason we enjoy everquest so much.

[WarpathEQ]

Melee classes are more gear dependent so it would be tough to solo at your level with your gear, possible certainly, but slow and painful. I would make your way back to unrest and ideally find groups on the second floor aka fireplace or FP. You can even still get some decent exp on the main floor until 22-23 and probably even solo some mobs while LFG if needed. You'll probably find a few pieces of useful gear there along the way as well.

Unrest has the ideal mix of undead mobs, strong exp gains, and its one of, if not the, most populated zone for your level to find groups consistently.

[bcbrown]

Hi Baros,

It was fun grouping with you the other night on my bard. Here's my advice for you: get good gear, find the right zones/mobs to fight, get good at the tactics for your class, and get good at finding groups.

For gear, in addition to getting hand-me-downs from more established players, try to find camps where the mobs drop a lot of money or stuff that sells well to vendors. Find interesting quests with good rewards. Look up gear on the paladin equipment reference page and see where it drops: https://wiki.project1999.com/Category:Paladin_Equipment.

Generally speaking, the order of importance for gear will be: Good weapon; decent haste; good AC; good HP. Stats are almost irrelevant for now; a +3str or +3wis item isn't going to move the needle in terms of survivability. Since you've got a mithril 2-handed sword now and one good +hp ring, getting some better AC items is probably the best bang for the buck. But if you can get a Golden or Platinum Fire Wedding Ring the extra HP will help a bunch in terms of surivability.

In terms of good zones for grouping, the established grouping zones are Unrest till 25-30, Mistmoore from 25-40, City of Mist till close to 50. Eastern Karana is another decent place to look; there's often one or two people soloing the spiders there and you can see if they want to group up. Nearby is also the Gorge of King Xorbb with minotaurs and High Hold Pass with gnolls. In South Karana at the far south end of the zone is the Aviaks, commonly referred to as KFC where you can often find some people. Just putting on your LFG tag isn't sufficient usually, you gotta be proactive about reaching out to ask if someone wants to group.

It also helps a lot to join a leveling guild. Castle is a fine raiding guild but I don't know how helpful it'll be in finding leveling groups. Friendly Druids and Nova seem like the two most active leveling guilds, and both have helpful people to answer questions and help with finding groups.

In terms of good cash camps, the Nybright Sisters in Lesser Faydark are too low-level to get xp, but they drop bronze weapons that sell well to vendors. Gargoyle Island in Ocean of Tears drop 9pp gargoyle eyes, but you'll probably want to wait until level 25-26 to go there with your gear.

In terms of tactics, always keep Center and Holy Armor up on yourself. If you're the tank in a group, spam Flash of Light to keep aggro on yourself, or ask a caster to keep the mob rooted so you can use root aggro. In a tough fight against an undead mob, casting Ward Undead between swings can make the difference. Lull can be helpful in splitting multiple mobs: it reduces aggro radius, so lull one mob and then pull the other, and the lulled mob shouldn't join in. Root can be super helpful in giving you a bit of a breather, but it doesn't last very long and often breaks early. One effective tactic on a tough fight is to root it, back up, and bind wounds to regain a little health. Bandages aren't super cheap (1pp/stack) but they can help a lot with recovery.

[Eisai]

There are never any updates to these sort of posts. I wonder if helping is ever helping...

[Baros]

@Eisai, I appreciate the advice you gave earlier and to answer your question, yes, helping is helping.

I've taken all of the advice in this thread to the game and have since leveled up a bit (now 24) and have gotten into some groups.

I know people keep telling me how hyper social this game is, and it wasn't until I was in a full group (me being the only one who wasn't an alt/super geared/knowledgeable) that I realized how true that statement is.

The quality of the game is night and day when comparing playing solo vs. playing with friends (especially when you're just starting out) and now that I've learned my class a bit and have /friended every person who's grouped up with me, I'm now starting to see why people enjoy this game.

Thanks again!

[Eisai]

<3

[WarpathEQ]

@Eisai, I appreciate the advice you gave earlier and to answer your question, yes, helping is helping.

I've taken all of the advice in this thread to the game and have since leveled up a bit (now 24) and have gotten into some groups.

I know people keep telling me how hyper social this game is, and it wasn't until I was in a full group (me being the only one who wasn't an alt/super geared/knowledgeable) that I realized how true that statement is.

The quality of the game is night and day when comparing playing solo vs. playing with friends (especially when you're just starting out) and now that I've learned my class a bit and have /friended every person who's grouped up with me, I'm now starting to see why people enjoy this game.

Thanks again!

The social aspect is definitely highly muted at this point in P99 but its still very much engrained in everything. In the future if a new server is ever rolled out it would be an entirely different experience as everyone would be in your shoes starting fresh without gear and needing to find groups to advance. Groups would be in abundance and what we think of as camps today would be split into mini camps or individual spawns due to the volume of people leveling together.

Even a couple years ago when I found P99 I was shocked that within 5 minutes of loading into the game I was already grouping with someone at lvl 1 in a newbie zone, definitely something that isn't part of the DNA of modern games.

[Salaryman]

Play on RED99 unless you wanna be cleric fodder to gear guild officers 10th alt

[Jimmyto111]

Hi everyone, i used to play original EQ in 2000, quit around 2004. i started playing again on a regular server and got up to lvl 86 druid, i quit again because i wasn't feeling it. i decided to start playing again but on P99, i haven't created a toon yet, but i wanted to introduce myself and was wondering which is the best server to play.

thanks

[Swish]

Hi everyone, i used to play original EQ in 2000, quit around 2004. i started playing again on a regular server and got up to lvl 86 druid, i quit again because i wasn't feeling it. i decided to start playing again but on P99, i haven't created a toon yet, but i wanted to introduce myself and was wondering which is the best server to play.

thanks

Green has the highest population, I think most start there.

Consider P99 red also.

[Baros]

@Salaryman I have to ask because I honestly don't know:

I've never played EQ outside of the small time I've leveled my one character in P99 Green - Why would I want to play on a PVP server?

Idk how it is for experienced players, but for someone who knows almost nothing of the game and has gotten to where he is based on reading the wiki in his spare time and the people who have helped along the way, I feel like PVP just adds more stress to my gameplay - corpse runs are already the bane of my existence, but now I have to worry that another player will kill me and cause even more stress? How is that fun?

[Duik]

He enjoys it because he is the sort to kill you repeatedly so as to *teach you*, ohh, and to get yellow text and to become a legend in his 12 player (cat litter) sandbox.

They also get tired of killing their boxed character for kudos points

[Eisai]

My first yellow text was best of the best girls v. Boys. They gave me the title "The Manslayer". Another legend no-one knows/cares about.

[Treefall]

Glad you're still trucking along.

If there are times you cannot find a group, I know this is boring, but the best thing you can do is find a 6-8 minute mob that doesn't have adds to camp. Preferably undead.

If it is super easy try adding a second mob in the interval. This way you are not running around losing mana regen which ultimately slows you down without a group.

With a pally you almost have to dad camp it to be efficient without outside buffs or decent gear.

In your solo group time try saving up for SCHW for some haste on your gloves. Once you can root hop in and out. Save stuns for interrupts.

But yes, group tank is the way to go! Pally is definitely one of the toughest first char/only chars to play IMO.

Edit: I will also add do not be ashamed to look for a duo partner (although many people that are soloing shoot it down) - it is more than twice as efficient because there is some bonus and your kill time will be much better. Some classes you would duo with really nicely: rogue (they stab while you tank/heal); bard (they have a lot at their disposal like slow/charm/snare); druid (good healer for pally (DS, charm pet, fast travel); enchanter (they are good with everyone but charm/mana regen/slow/haste). Not that other combos don't work but those shine in my mind with pally.

[Duik]

My first yellow text was best of the best girls v. Boys. They gave me the title "The Manslayer". Another legend no-one knows/cares about.

I read that as Mansplainer
I contend it would be better.

[Eisai]

Lol. That might have been their title if the boys had won. Girls had a huge advantage, we started the match by dredging up every thing they said or did wrong in the last twenty years and then lowkey body shaming while wearing low-cut tops and yoga pants.

[Eisai]

Whoops!

[Eisai]

Yeah...