EQ II Beginner's HelpFollow

EQ II

Week one

As a new player to EQ II there are some things that were not immediately apparent to me and it occurred to me that after having discovered these, I should write them up for other new players, so that they can get their questions answered as well.

The first island is pretty straightforward, so I am going to start once you arrive in freeport (for you evil characters). Some of this writeup will not apply to you good characters as I am playing an evil one.

Some of the writeup will apply.

So bear with me.




"OK, I'm in the city now. What do I do?"

Talk to the NPCs who wave their hands at you frantically. They have quests. Somewhere, you will find a quest to grant you citizenship to the city. In Freeport, it is on a sign hung outside the gate. You want this quest. It is most important.

Before you are a citizen, you can still move around the city by way of the theive's lane, but thats a very slow way to go about it.

"OK I got quests. How do I know what to do?"

Press J to bring up the quest log and find your lowest levelled quest. Click it. Read the objectives. If it sounds good to you, keep it selected and go do it.

Now, if the quest wants you to find a specific person, they will be listed as in a certain district. Get in that district first and then talk to a guard (look for red people since they are extremely high level and you are not) and then click on the guard. Type in their name (the person you are looking for) hit OK and follow the yellow line to the person.

Easy =)

Some quests will want you to kill stuff. Just read where the stuff is located and get to it!




"I'm so lost. Where is district X Y Z or how do I get to district X Y Z?"

OK, first, you NEED citizenship. Did you get it yet? If not, skip whatever quest you are on until you get citizenship.

Once you are a citizen, you can move around the city more freely. Click the gates located at the edges of regions to move around within the city to their connecting regions.

Also, if you find a dock, there should be a mariner's bell on it. Click the bell to move to districts with other bells. This is my prefered method of getting around in the city.

Now, for another useful tidbit. I find the in game maps to be a bit too bare to be useful.

You can upgrade them. Someone wrote a utility that upgrades the maps with all sorts of information and color codes points of interests, adds connecting lines, etc.

This tool is really really handy. I recommend you get it.

Get it here:
http://maps.eq2interface.com/

After picking this up, moving around should be much much easier.

As for the figuring out where quests take place, etc, familiarity with the city will really help, as will using the guard system. By level 8 or so, you should really start getting the feel for questing in the city.




"How do I know what mobs are OK to fight?"

Completely gray mobs are beneath you. In fact, you can run smack in to them and they won't aggro you. Only if you attack them, or another mob within their perception that carries the same title will they aggro you.

Now, up from there are green and blue mobs, then white ones, then yellow and red ones.

Avoid Heroic mobs until you really start feeling good about yourself. Run if you gain accidental aggro and spam the YELL because it encourages mobs to break off and lets the game regen life to you while you do it.

Beneath mob's names will be arrows many times. They are an indicator to the mob's toughness versus other mobs of the same level as them. One arrow pointing down is easier than the average mob. Two down really easy. One up, harder than normal. Two up is not advised to fight.

Another thing to note. If you click a mob and he is part of a group, his group mates will highlight with him. Be warned, however, that sometimes they are a distance away.

Finally, sometimes you cannot really look around to see if a mob is part of a group. (Due to geometry and proximity pulling adds you dont want)

If a mob is a weak one, indicated by a single or double arrow down, it is very likely a part of a group. Use this rule of thumb. It's not perfect, but it fits most scenarios.



"How ever am I going to get cash?"

Do the quests. As you start doing them, others will open up and as you keep going, they start rewarding you will more and more cash.




"OK, I paid my first week's rent for my room, now what should I spend the cash on?"

If you are a warrior or scout class, upgrade your equipment, then your skills (find a "trainer").

If you are a mage class, upgrade your spells, then your equipment (find a "scribe")

If you are a priest class, upgrade your defensive equipment first, then skills (also "scribe"s), then fill in extra equipment from there.



"What good is my room?"

You can sell stuff from your room. If nothing else, this is a very important function.

Buy a Billboard from a vendor (practically any "merchant" carries one) and then place it in your room." From there, you can list items.

List only items that are stored in your house vault as the rest arent going to stick around as you exit the room or log off.



"My vault only has two slots and I want to sell more stuff!"

Buy bags, insert them in the two slots, open them up, insert stuff to sell.

=)



"Stuff is in my vault, how do I list it for sale?"

Second tab on the billboard once you have placed your billboard on the wall.

I placed my billboard immediately inside my door for easy access, by the way.



"My room is dark."

Yup. And its going to be a long long time before you get lighting fixtures other than the one you are given early on.



"It wont let me place items in any other direction than the default one" or "How do I rotate items before I place them?"

Scroll your middle mouse wheel while positioning it.




"I have bags, but opening them, insertting stuff, closing them, ad nauseum is really slowing me down."

There is a key mapping you can assign to toggle ALL bags. I made SHIFT B my combo for this. It really speeds things up.



"I put on a hat and my character is ugly as sin now. I like the head I designed in the character screen."

/showhood

Enjoy =)




Technical stuff:

"Game .. really .. choppy"

In the graphics options, turn stuff down.

Hardest hitters are all the water settings, having the particle settings high, having the texture resolution high, having the draw distance pushed out and having the lighting settings high.


"I press my WINDOWS key and the game crashes"

If this happens to you (it happened to me) then only run your game in a window. It doesn't fully support Full Screen for your hardware.


"The graphics are all edgy and sharp and ugly..."

In the control panel, if you have the drivers installed for your card, you should be able to set up a graphics profile for EverQuest II. In that profile, you can override the game's antialising settings. Make it at least 2x. Avoid 2xQ as EQII is not really optimized for that algorithm. Move directly to 4x if you want more.


"My character's head is disappearing."

This is driving me crazy and I have no solution. Rebooting sometimes will help it stay away for a while. Sometimes it wont. It appears to happen only to the Ratonga models from my experience (I am a ratonga).


OK, that's all I have for now. As I figure more stuff out, I might add more to this post.

Happy gaming.

First week -- I don't have all those links.

Perhaps someone else can jump in with additional help (and I too, could learn from it!) =)

Awesome, thanks.

I am making a list for week two. Additional stuff coming from what I am learning this week. =)

Good info ^^ Just started last week and this answered a bunch of my newb questions.

i had the same problem with missing heads on ratonga and kerra. and my DE's arm would dissapear. id also get real short blips of only black screen. it appears this only happens on dual core amd proccessors i found the fix for it on eqstation forums

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=114592

i havent tried it yet (as im at work) but everyone on the fourm seems to have no problems after the driver update.

Can you tell me how to lose my head and arms. That would entertain me :D>