Well I thought I owed a progress report.
I won't make comparisons as I know that just annoys people.
I followed the suggestions and started (do people still say "rolled"?) a Drakkin and did the tutorial.
The tutorial hasn't changed much and doesn't touch a lot of the new things. It could for example try and teach you about putting abilities on buttons. Not exactly a new thing but I found it fairly essential in levelling my new character to have stuff like taunt on a button. Luckily I was at the stage of remembering it was possible and knowing it was just a matter of finding it. How a genuinely new player would manage I'm not sure.
Anyway, tutorial completed, I went off to PoK and hired a mercenary. This is definitely a major boost to soloability. Dear old Agduita following me about, buffing and healing me - and occasionally running screaming into the corner when I pull more than I can handle. Just before a pull I'm certain I can see beads of sweat on her forehead
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One lesson learned is to hire a merc ASAP. At level 10 it cost me nothing and about 4g per 15 mins. At 40 its 600p just to hire.
After the PoK armour quests I went off to explore Crescent Reach. Obviously arriving after a lot of quests were grey to me. However it is a well-built expansion with some decent quest lines.
One thing that I did find similar to other mature MMOs that have "simplified" levelling is that I start a line of quests and long before I get to the end of the line I have out-levelled them.
This is exacerbated in EQ by the Defiant armour. Generally I'm liking it but it does trash and trivialise pretty much any quest reward so far. Not to mention removing most of the need for WR bags (always a major thing back when I used to play) and CHA boosters like opal steins. The silly stats on my defiant gear probably mean I'm at the point of no change on CHA and the STR means I can fill my bags with pretty much anything and not worry about encumbrance. Maybe these come back later on?
Making money from drops is also outrageously better than it used to be. I can remember at 20 people getting into fights over bronze brigandine drops from PC that sold for a whole plat. Now you're getting stacks of things from normal world mobs that are 6p+ per item. And the Defiant sells well in the bazaar.
The other thing that seems to be out of kilter is the tradeskill drops. One of my chars had a lot of LDoN armour (Calcified this and that etc) which he was crafting for the guild. That is well and truly blown away. I suspect the same applies to most things. In fact trying to level tailoring I was struck by how useless pretty much everything I made was going to be until I reached a very high level. Acrylia studded tunic anyone? No, I thought not
But for now I've levelled to 41 and its mostly pretty good fun. So much so that I've paid full price to reactivate another account.
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