The Glade 4.0

Defiant should be a fair bit better than anything from expansions before SoF.

Once you get to SoD, the group armor is better than Defiant, but it requires some flagging to be able to make a full set.

UF group armour at the 9th teir rivals SoD raid Tower 4.5 amour.

Thank you Ladas. But I have to admit I am confused by the acronyms and tiers. SoD? HoT? 9th tier?

SoF = Secrets of Faydwer
SoD = Seeds of Distruction (a very group friendly expansion with high quality group level gear).
UF = Underfoot, which is the current expansion, and about as rough on groups as SoD was nice.
HoT = House of Thule = Expansion due in about 2.5 weeks.

The Teirs are reference to how far you have progression in the expansions, and from expansion to expansion. The starter zones in SoD are considered Teir 1 and 2, working up to Teir 5 as the final theme for that expansion. In SoD, I think only the Korafax (Discord theme) is locked behind progression, but in order to make the group level BP and Legs, you need to have completed at least 3 or 4 of the other themes.

T6 are the 3 "starter" zones in Underfoot, though you can also access the 3 T7 zones without doing any tasks. However, they get those ranks because the clays that are dropped in each teir are shared, with the clays from the T7 zones being slightly better than the T6 clays. T8 are unlocked by completing the 6 final group tasks in each of the T6 and 7 zones (only the person requesting the task needs to do the pre-quests). The clays in T8 are slightly better than the clays before, and doing the 3 final flag tasks in the 3 T8 zones unlocks the final 2 zones in Underfoot, or T9. These group level clays are roughly on par with the end game raid armour from Seeds of Destruction (which is refered to as 4.5).

Im indifferent on the matter to be honest. My vacation, and extended play time are almost at an end. Raz has done just about all of the self improvement stuff he can at his level. He could use a couple of decent 1hs weapons, but he has plenty of other alternatives, so it isn't a big deal.

I have plenty of things to do in my spare time. I made a rogue that I plan to level quickly, and eventually teach poison making, if it's not too much of a PITA.

Other than a few AA, I doubt she will be pausing at 51 for long though.

Canni AA is 59, yes.

My suggestion would be this:

We set rough time lines. We might end up staying at 52 for months and never having enough of us on at the right time to do Nag/Vox. But we should at least try.

I'd say we do something like "52 until Oct 8th, then 55 until the end of November", and then continue the same thing past that. Gives us all a chance to catch up and experience old world content, without leashing anyone back too much. Basically our own version of a time-locked progression server.

But as with Midgen, I'm relatively indifferent. I'll leave the decision up to others.

As to the Velious quest armor- stats aren't great, some of the clickies are. That, and it's quite nostalgic to kill dragons and giants.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Yeah, assuming I can catch up in a timely manner, I have no objection to killing some giants and dragons even if the lootz isn't the primary interest.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

This is a pretty good plan.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I imagine so. They're just not the nostalgic targets that Vox and Naggy are. Gore was popular, but not iconic in the same way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think the main part is that there are (a) more of them, and (b) the spawn timers aren't as set, so it's easier to find them up. Also, we have a wider window to target them, since they don't banish.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I thought I had responded to this...

I'm fine with this plan.

Raz is pretty much maxed out for levels and AAs until the 8th. I'll be happy to log him and help anyone out who needs him, but in the mean time I'm going to be focusing on leveling the rogue and druid. The druid reached 50 (almost 51) last night, and the rogue is halfway through 49.

I will probably leave Razael at 52 with the others until we all agree to move on, but I will definitely be leveling the druid, and probably the rogue towards 60/65 or so.

There are not many AAs that makes sense to buy that are available at 52. I picked up metabolism 3 last night to stave off maxed banked AAs.

I'd pick up Alchemy mastery, but it's level dependent on 59 which sucks because my success rate at SOW V potions last night was not ideal. (Alchemy at 171 now). I haven't opened my bandolier, but looks like I'll be improving the slots on it soon.

I'd go for more potion belt slots over more bandolier slots. I rarely have more than 4 bandolier setups, even at 80.

You could also go for the extended breath line- the last AA makes it innate enduring breath.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

remember that AA XP scales. the more you have, the slower it goes. you may want to not be grinding them at this point.

Riov, the problem is, we are stopped at level 52 (in hopes of snagging Vox/Naggy), and are at 95%+ into the level. We have the max # of AA's banked (30),and don't have any more useful AA's to buy at our level. If we play at all (questing, farming drops for tradeskills, spells, etc...), we risk the exp overflowing into real exp and dinging (Raz already inadvertently experienced this once).

meh. Sacrifice? Essense emeralds are still useful.

Keep in mind also, for more modern quests where you get a claim window, you can bank up to 10 quest completions for the experience later.

It sounds like I should maybe shelf the shaman when I have 30aa banked.

Honestly, if we're having people shelf characters... We should probably move on.

Shelving characters and re-grinding on alts is more likely to lead to burnout (from what I've seen). You lose steam with your "main", and start to lose interest.

We've already lost our warrior because warrior aggro at 52 makes playing them boring and frustrating

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

A well armored warrior at level 52 grouped any other tank class and/or tank mercs are just really bad rogues.

I have no doubt that will change, and to be clear, I'm having fun on the alts (sub mains?), so don't cancel the vox/naggy effort on my account. I would defer to the consensus on that decision. I have plenty of other things to do.

And Raz is not 'lost'. He's still there and I break him out often enough. He shrouded down to a level 20 wizard and grouped with Kyvas the other day, which was pretty cool (never done that before).

Anyway, I just whine about it because I like the way it sounds. Don't mind me :p~~

What is this Shroud?

And there's an awful lot of plate floating around, maybe I should make a plate class... if i can face the re-grind... I know Midgen said the tank is only so so, but I had considered a warrior. It might be nice not to worry about mana.

basically you can play a gimped version of some other class at any level (In 5 level increments) you can gain experience in that class tree to get slightly better versions. Dont know anyone that actually does this or progressed through it. but the idea was a lvl 85 could shroud down to a lvl 30 and play with their friends. (most lvl 85s would rather just power level their friends) the shrouds dont have much for gear and can't wear normal gear, but it lets you complete some quests --need to do the Darkhollow explore quests? Shroud to a rogue.
Need a healer? Shroud to a cleric.

Need a DPS? Stay your current class. the shroud DPS was pathetic even when shrouding to a dps class.

You can use a "shroud" to artificially, and temporarily, lower the level of your character. The idea was that this allowed people to play with their friends without worry about level and exp restrictions in groups.

Naggy and Vox though, if I recall correctly, see through shrouds, so you can't use those to kill them.

Some shrouds also allow you to change your class, with limited abilities. Its like doing a monster mission, but without having to be in the specific instance. The only use I have seen for this though is shrouding to a rogue to use stealth to explore a zone with See Invis.

We did shroud raids on Naggy/Vox at one point, so if they see through them, it's recent.

Most are so worthless it just isn't worth shrouding.

Warriors are a fun class, they're just very gear dependent. Best tanks in the game, but take a bit more aggro management than Pal/SK- but have higher DPS than either.

I have a 75 warrior on FV that I enjoy quite a bit.

That said, they're like any "pure" class- pretty much a 1-trick pony. They tank exceptionally well, and do good melee DPS... But have no utility to speak of.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I just figured with the low population and people blasting to 60+ we'd have a good chance at finding them up for fun. It seems I was wrong. If people want to move on I can live with that. I don't want to be holding people up.

Also I don't think there is any other reason to stop other than vox/naggy. Any other content we want to do can be done as available for a challenge or at any level for need/fun.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Just a suggestion, but why not blow through to 55/60 on your mains, where there's lots of content and plenty of AAs to be had, and then just gradually level up an alt to 52 for Naggy/Vox?