Post by Brawlgin Skulforge on Feb 21, 2009 4:04:38 GMT -8
Hey all:
I just finished this guide for my guildsite, and thought that some of you might appreciate it too. At the very least, it might save you $20 wasted on some pay site for the same information.
First off, let me tell you that there are numerous disadvantages to power leveling. Some are correctable, some are not. Let me outline what the consequences might be, so you can decide if you want a character to be power leveled.
#1 – Missed Content – by being power leveled, you’ll bypass a lot of the content you’ve paid for. Taking a group of L10s and barely defeating Emperor Crush through careful planning, quick thinking, and flat out old fashioned luck is not the same experience as coming back at L50 and squishing him when he’s a pleasant forest green. On the other hand, if this is the 5th character on the account and you’ve already spent numerous hours in Crushbone, you may want to bypass that experience this time around.
#2 – Lack of game knowledge – this is the number one reason why power leveling can be a bad idea. When your character hits the upper levels, your groupmates are going to expect you to know the mechanics of how this game works. This is not knowledge you can pick up from the manual, and even online guides such as this and others cannot do more than outline ideas. You will be expected to know what abbreviations mean, when sitting is a bad idea, why it’s important to avoid area effects around mezzed mobs and vertically oriented zones. Nothing will upset people more than a L50 character that doesn’t know how to contribute. If this is your first character in Everquest _DO NOT_ power level him. Yes, it generally means an increase in overall power, but the mobs you’ll be facing will be bigger too, and will often have a lot of new tricks to boot. Experience the game and learn what’s going on. If you joined EQ because a friend wanted to play with you, and only has a L65 monk, great! That just means both of you have an opportunity to try something new. Have your friend start a new character of a different class, possibly one intended to compliment the character you’ve selected. It’ll be a better experience for both of you, and a heck of a lot more fun for him. I haven’t said it yet, so I’ll say it right here. Power leveling is flat out boring. It’s work, and often tedious.
#3 – Lack of character knowledge – just because you know how to play the game doesn’t mean you automatically know how to play all types of characters effectively. If you’re trying out a new class, I generally find that power leveling isn’t detrimental in and of itself, but make a point to take a break and play the game for real every time you get a new ability, even if it’s one you’ve used playing another character. Feign pulling as a shadow knight is very different from feign pulling as a monk. Dealing with charms and mezzes is very different between an enchanter and a bard. This is doubly true for abilities you haven’t used before. For instance, stuns and snares for paladins or shadow knights do a lot more than stop or slow a mob – they’re used for gaining agro so that your teammates don’t get beat to a bloody pulp for keeping you alive. This is not information that is in the spell description. Lull classes need to understand how lull works and when it’s necessary. Do the research and practice your skills, so that your teammates can count on you.
#4 – Unrealistic expectations – This is more of a problem for new players. Seeing several levels go by in the space of an hour when being power leveled does little to prepare a person for the slow xp of the 50s, where a single kill often means 1% xp or less. Similarly, new players may be frustrated with the xp rate offered by the blues and light blues they’re forced to take on cautiously when they have become accustomed to easily defeating a stream of reds.
#5 – Weak melee skills – A L50 warrior with a defense of 3 and an offense of 7 is no good to anyone. There’s just no way around that fact. Even caster classes should at least work on getting defensive skills up so that they aren’t killed in one hit when they draw agro. Fortunately, there’s a way to fix these skills. For offensive skills, you want to get your dexterity as high as possible through gear and buffs. This is the only stat that is checked for skill ups – the others don’t matter for this purpose. Go find a something that cons at least light blue (if the mob isn’t worth experience to you, you won’t get skill ups) and swing at it. Every time you swing, you get a check to determine whether or not you skill up, so having haste items and/or spells on can be very beneficial, as can selecting weapons with as low a delay as possible – remember that for this you’re not looking to do damage as such, so for skill ups a 3/18 weapon is much better than a 24/25. Two caveats – you need to actually hit the mob, so lower level targets work much better, and you need to have at least 1 skill point in the skill to start with. If your one hand blunt is at 0, you will never skill up until you go to your guild leader and add at least one point. For defensive skills, it’s almost the same story. You want your agility as high as possible, and you want to get hit, a lot. Obviously, hits from light blue mobs hurt a lot less. In fact, if your healer can handle it, getting hit by multiple mobs at once isn’t a bad idea. The faster the mob swings, the more skill up checks you get. Around level 25 or so, you can find some mobs that are ideal for this purpose in the Echo Caverns called Needlites – these are monk mosquitoes that hit very fast, but not too hard. You can also cheat a little on these skill ups by /dueling a pet class and having them summon a pet that is barely light blue to you for you to fight. That way you have definitely control over when the fight ends and won’t accidentally die in the middle of combat.
#6 – Weak casting and triggered skills – Other skills are easy, if tedious, to skill up. Basically, a check is made every time you use the skill to determine if you’ve skilled up. High intelligence or wisdom increases the chance of a skill up. For spells, it doesn’t matter what the level of the spell is – a L1 spell has just as much chance of getting you a skill up as a L50 spell. This means when you’re working on casting skills, you should make a spell set with the cheapest spell in each discipline (Alteration, Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, and Evocation) and just cast the spell again and again. Offensive spells can be cast on yourself or your pet, and if you’re in a neutral zone like POK, you won’t take any damage. If you have a device like a gravis gamepad (this is not banned by the EULA, since it’s a device rather than an external macro program – in fact it’s specifically mentioned in there), you can set it to keep on pounding your cast key and park your character in the guild hall in the regeneration pool. Triggered skills like lock pick and sense traps work the same way – you just have to do them a heck of a lot. Use the time waiting for LDON groups to form to practice your triggered skills. Bards get a kind of get out of jail free thing on skill ups – if they’re only singing one song constantly and have an appropriate instrument equipped, they get a skill check for that instrument type every time the server ticks. If you’re working on song skills, make your bardling your trader and leave him singing his heart out in the bazaar. Do everyone a favor though – if you’re practicing brass with an AOE spell, park him in a safe spot no one goes, rather than a heavily populated zone – people don’t like having to turn off their spell effects to navigate. If you’re level 42 or above, you can sing the L42 group haste spell for brass and not have this problem.
#7 Annoying other players – The last point I’d like to make is that power leveling, by it’s very nature, it’s disruptive. You’re going to be going through a lot of mobs very quickly, which often means that you’re taking mobs that could be xp for other players in the zone, and you may be endangering those players if you have to zone off mobs because you grabbed more than you could handle. A friendly /ooc to the effect that a power leveling session is going on in such and such a place is a bare minimum. Have a train warning macro set up and move to a different zone if you are inconveniencing others. Keep in mind that even though you are electing to bypass content in this way, others are not.
.... grabbed from post from forum of allahkazam
I just finished this guide for my guildsite, and thought that some of you might appreciate it too. At the very least, it might save you $20 wasted on some pay site for the same information.
First off, let me tell you that there are numerous disadvantages to power leveling. Some are correctable, some are not. Let me outline what the consequences might be, so you can decide if you want a character to be power leveled.
#1 – Missed Content – by being power leveled, you’ll bypass a lot of the content you’ve paid for. Taking a group of L10s and barely defeating Emperor Crush through careful planning, quick thinking, and flat out old fashioned luck is not the same experience as coming back at L50 and squishing him when he’s a pleasant forest green. On the other hand, if this is the 5th character on the account and you’ve already spent numerous hours in Crushbone, you may want to bypass that experience this time around.
#2 – Lack of game knowledge – this is the number one reason why power leveling can be a bad idea. When your character hits the upper levels, your groupmates are going to expect you to know the mechanics of how this game works. This is not knowledge you can pick up from the manual, and even online guides such as this and others cannot do more than outline ideas. You will be expected to know what abbreviations mean, when sitting is a bad idea, why it’s important to avoid area effects around mezzed mobs and vertically oriented zones. Nothing will upset people more than a L50 character that doesn’t know how to contribute. If this is your first character in Everquest _DO NOT_ power level him. Yes, it generally means an increase in overall power, but the mobs you’ll be facing will be bigger too, and will often have a lot of new tricks to boot. Experience the game and learn what’s going on. If you joined EQ because a friend wanted to play with you, and only has a L65 monk, great! That just means both of you have an opportunity to try something new. Have your friend start a new character of a different class, possibly one intended to compliment the character you’ve selected. It’ll be a better experience for both of you, and a heck of a lot more fun for him. I haven’t said it yet, so I’ll say it right here. Power leveling is flat out boring. It’s work, and often tedious.
#3 – Lack of character knowledge – just because you know how to play the game doesn’t mean you automatically know how to play all types of characters effectively. If you’re trying out a new class, I generally find that power leveling isn’t detrimental in and of itself, but make a point to take a break and play the game for real every time you get a new ability, even if it’s one you’ve used playing another character. Feign pulling as a shadow knight is very different from feign pulling as a monk. Dealing with charms and mezzes is very different between an enchanter and a bard. This is doubly true for abilities you haven’t used before. For instance, stuns and snares for paladins or shadow knights do a lot more than stop or slow a mob – they’re used for gaining agro so that your teammates don’t get beat to a bloody pulp for keeping you alive. This is not information that is in the spell description. Lull classes need to understand how lull works and when it’s necessary. Do the research and practice your skills, so that your teammates can count on you.
#4 – Unrealistic expectations – This is more of a problem for new players. Seeing several levels go by in the space of an hour when being power leveled does little to prepare a person for the slow xp of the 50s, where a single kill often means 1% xp or less. Similarly, new players may be frustrated with the xp rate offered by the blues and light blues they’re forced to take on cautiously when they have become accustomed to easily defeating a stream of reds.
#5 – Weak melee skills – A L50 warrior with a defense of 3 and an offense of 7 is no good to anyone. There’s just no way around that fact. Even caster classes should at least work on getting defensive skills up so that they aren’t killed in one hit when they draw agro. Fortunately, there’s a way to fix these skills. For offensive skills, you want to get your dexterity as high as possible through gear and buffs. This is the only stat that is checked for skill ups – the others don’t matter for this purpose. Go find a something that cons at least light blue (if the mob isn’t worth experience to you, you won’t get skill ups) and swing at it. Every time you swing, you get a check to determine whether or not you skill up, so having haste items and/or spells on can be very beneficial, as can selecting weapons with as low a delay as possible – remember that for this you’re not looking to do damage as such, so for skill ups a 3/18 weapon is much better than a 24/25. Two caveats – you need to actually hit the mob, so lower level targets work much better, and you need to have at least 1 skill point in the skill to start with. If your one hand blunt is at 0, you will never skill up until you go to your guild leader and add at least one point. For defensive skills, it’s almost the same story. You want your agility as high as possible, and you want to get hit, a lot. Obviously, hits from light blue mobs hurt a lot less. In fact, if your healer can handle it, getting hit by multiple mobs at once isn’t a bad idea. The faster the mob swings, the more skill up checks you get. Around level 25 or so, you can find some mobs that are ideal for this purpose in the Echo Caverns called Needlites – these are monk mosquitoes that hit very fast, but not too hard. You can also cheat a little on these skill ups by /dueling a pet class and having them summon a pet that is barely light blue to you for you to fight. That way you have definitely control over when the fight ends and won’t accidentally die in the middle of combat.
#6 – Weak casting and triggered skills – Other skills are easy, if tedious, to skill up. Basically, a check is made every time you use the skill to determine if you’ve skilled up. High intelligence or wisdom increases the chance of a skill up. For spells, it doesn’t matter what the level of the spell is – a L1 spell has just as much chance of getting you a skill up as a L50 spell. This means when you’re working on casting skills, you should make a spell set with the cheapest spell in each discipline (Alteration, Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, and Evocation) and just cast the spell again and again. Offensive spells can be cast on yourself or your pet, and if you’re in a neutral zone like POK, you won’t take any damage. If you have a device like a gravis gamepad (this is not banned by the EULA, since it’s a device rather than an external macro program – in fact it’s specifically mentioned in there), you can set it to keep on pounding your cast key and park your character in the guild hall in the regeneration pool. Triggered skills like lock pick and sense traps work the same way – you just have to do them a heck of a lot. Use the time waiting for LDON groups to form to practice your triggered skills. Bards get a kind of get out of jail free thing on skill ups – if they’re only singing one song constantly and have an appropriate instrument equipped, they get a skill check for that instrument type every time the server ticks. If you’re working on song skills, make your bardling your trader and leave him singing his heart out in the bazaar. Do everyone a favor though – if you’re practicing brass with an AOE spell, park him in a safe spot no one goes, rather than a heavily populated zone – people don’t like having to turn off their spell effects to navigate. If you’re level 42 or above, you can sing the L42 group haste spell for brass and not have this problem.
#7 Annoying other players – The last point I’d like to make is that power leveling, by it’s very nature, it’s disruptive. You’re going to be going through a lot of mobs very quickly, which often means that you’re taking mobs that could be xp for other players in the zone, and you may be endangering those players if you have to zone off mobs because you grabbed more than you could handle. A friendly /ooc to the effect that a power leveling session is going on in such and such a place is a bare minimum. Have a train warning macro set up and move to a different zone if you are inconveniencing others. Keep in mind that even though you are electing to bypass content in this way, others are not.
.... grabbed from post from forum of allahkazam