A few things that come to mind

[Magister]

Howdy,

A few topics I would like to discuss this evening. (please bear in mind, the following post deals with things under lv35-40)

First off, SK's and their quests.

Everytime I try to get a decent weapon for my SK, people always suggest I go do a quest (that is paladin only btw) to get that weapon, because its a really good weapon. Sadly SK's don't get any decent weapon quests that I have seen.

There is a 1hb for the Starfall 1 quest, but honestly for me (not sure about everyone else), I prefer to use the 2h weapons and for the most part, I see most of the others using 2h weapons as well.

Perhaps that staff could be changed? or perhaps you could be given a choice (1h or 2h weapon).

Or just perhaps, we could see some new weapon quests added in (2hb would be really nice).

Another topic I would like to discuss and this seems to be a widely known thing (as I have been told this many times while trying to get one...) is the severe lack of Wizard Cloaks.

Sure, there are lots of nice ones that are nodrop and take a army to get, but try to find one, that you can solo for, or even need a small party for below lv35 .. Pretty much not going to happen. If one exists, I'd love to know what it is

Moving right along ...

I see a TOOON of caster items (while trying to get twink gear for my wizard) that seem to be almost primarily focused on mages / necros / beastmasters / druids .. while very few that seem geared more specifically towards a wizard.

As some examples:

You will find a nice caster item for a particular slot, but it will be like INT/WIS/MANA, or you will find another nice item and it will be INT/CHA/MANA but it will have a useless effect on it like Companion Str or Health or Healing, or some such thing.

There is very very little in the way for pure wizard items for basically the first 2/3'rds of the game it seems to me. However, should you try to actually purchase any more "wizardly" type of items, the costs skyrocket like mad!

To outfit and twink my SK from head to toe in VERY nice gear, it cost me maybe 1000plat if that (that's probably actually pretty high), now fast forward to my wizard ... EGAD! ... We are in the thousands!

Which brings me to my next point .. Flowing thought items ..

Why are there so many easily available recovery items (all the way up to recovery V!) yet, practically no FT items? (at least none that doesn't take a substantial effort to acquire in a high lv zone).

I mean, from playing both a melee and a caster, I can honestly say my caster has 1000x more down time than my melee, so you would think it would be easier to get mana regen items, than hp regen items ...

Now, because these items are such a hassle to get, even utterly HORRID items (a -10/-10 item comes to mind) that have even FT1 on them sell for ludicrous prices (150-200+ pp for a -10/-10 item all because of FT1? I mean come on lol)

Don't want to sound like I am whining, I am simply trying to point out what I feel a some flaws in the game atm. I look around at other classes and they have such a easy time gearing up with some VERY nice pieces at a fraction of the price some other classes pay for even mediocre equipment.

Like, take Necromancer for instance, probably hands down the most over played, easiest solo class in the entire game (from what I can tell anyways), yet they have a ridiculous amount of VERY nice gear, specifically tailored for that class, far more than any other class from what I can tell. (esp at lower levels, or items without level reqs).

Now look at Wizard, or Monk (I seem to remember a lot of monk friends having hard time trying to find decent gear), the same can be said with SK's as well, they sorta get squished in between the War/Pal items and the Necro caster items, with very little tailored for them.

Just so you don't think I am only complaining about characters I use (although that would make sense if you think about it, because how would I have any knowledge about a character I don't play hehe), I also have a thief, which I found more than ample items for and it was a breeze to deck out. I also mentioned monks, a class I don't actually play, but have a lot of monk friends that seem to struggle with gear.

I guess after reading all that, what it all boils down to is this:

> More weapon quests (esp. 2h Weapons! - Blunt, more than Slash)

> Some Wizzy Love in terms of
- Increased Back items at lower levels
- More Tailored Wizard Items with INT/CHA or INT/CHA/MANA with focus/effects that actually benefit a wizard (such as FT, Dmg, Maybe a Mana shield to deflect melee dmg, etc)

> Some SK love in terms of
- Increased 2h weapons (basically more blunt), a lot of the problem here besides most being useless, (see pretty much everyone with the same couple of weapons for 2hb, ie: fin or garg staff), is that the ratios are really crazy, like 30dmg and 60speed, no one wants to use something like that when they can use something like 44dmg and 40 or 50 spd. Now I will grant you that the very very high level 2hb weapons seem to correct this a lot, but some of the speeds are pretty disgusting too (80,90, 100+ speed? egad!)
- More Tailored gear (ex: Str/Dex/Int or Str/Int or Str/Dex/Cha - alot of SK's seem to suffer from cruddy cha due to the warrior type armor we are forced to wear to tank and our int isnt usually to hot either)

Finally, I would like to see more item turn quests that grant xp rewards. It gives players that don't always have the option of getting into a team to power grind in a dungeon setting, or that refuse or can't dual box a dedicated healer, a chance to level above ground in a variety of areas and settings.

Now, if you are afraid the items are going to get farmed by high levels, and sent to lower level people or sold, you could always make them nodrop I guess, might help a little.

Anyways, I am a new player to both the server and the game (never played EQ before in my life, been here maybe a week and a half now I guess), so I might not understand why some things are the way they are. I just felt some things seemed out of whack compared to other classes and felt I needed to bring them up.

It's a terrific server and I do enjoy myself on it, I just think I could enjoy myself more with a few tiny alterations perhaps

Cheers.

P.s. When I bring up gear, I am not looking for anything godlike like (+25 | +25 | 100hp | 100mana) or anything, but little things, like take for instance some of them could look like this:

+3cha, +3int, +25mana +5ac (Wiz Cloak)
+5str +5dex +3cha +3int +10mana +20hp 10AC (Sk Shoulders)
2HB Weapons between 35-60dmg with between 30-50spd (like 60dmg weapon would be more Lv35-40'ish but a 35/40spd would be a nice Lv20+ weapon)

Anyways, just examples, maybe they are over powered, I can't say, but I dont think they are so bad tbh.

 

[lotox]

Flowing thought charms are easily available;
To the extremely rich :haw:

Infact this is the first item I ever saved up for , the FT1 charm and I still think it was worth every copper.

As for cloaks , I have not seen many caster cloaks ; Infact I see most people pulling off the shawl of lost blessings till 50+

Petition for a spellcaster version of Cloak of the frostweaver.

Transmute blade turns the 1hs into 2hs and vice versa right? That'd be nifty on shadow knights starfall.


Sorry for the crappy post too.

Also On FT vs Recovery , mana seems to recover much faster then hp ; atleast for me.
As of that boost to it a while back in recovering it , almost non of my casters go oom, but then again none of them are 65++++

 

[robopirateninja]

You brought up a TON of stuff in your post but grats on not posting it in a horrible format, as many on the board are wont to do.

SK 2handed items: You mentioned being new to SoD and Game in general: Paladins and shadowknights are considered a "knight" archetype, and one of their basic functions is "tank that uses a shield." They are able to use shields for greater tanking ability because they can hold aggro with their various spells, a warrior cannot generate agro as well, and usually has to rely on two weapons for aggro. Knights have a plethora of 1-handed wepaons with better ratios than any other class would see on such an item because of this, and because they can't dual-wield weapons at all. Two handed weapons are definitely still useful, since they nearly always out-ratio a one hander and attack slower, making them ideal for doing dps when you AREN'T tanking.

While some items can be sparse (I main a wizard and off the top of my head I really can't think of any cloaks in your level range myself) you may be too ambitious with you gear selection. Rather than trying to get a little bit of everythiing on each item (as in your 3/3/20 example) look for items that have high bonuses to one stat or another, and fill another slot with a different stat. For example, the item Orb of All-Seeing gives a straight +25 int, but no other stats. Snag that in one hand and look for some cha on another item instead. To be honest though, it is far easier to level a pure caster like a wizard on crap gear than a melee, as long as you can afford to continue buying all your spells.

Flowing thought and recovery are available in such different quantities for two reasons: meditation (and the insane rate at whcich you gain mana from it), and the difference in power gained by your character regenning more mana compared to regenning hp. A tank gaining one or HP per tick while it takes 20 or 30 dmg per hit isn't going to provide much noticeable benefit, whereas with an extra few mana a healer can keep that tank alive for far lnonger than his points of regen would, or a dps caster can wreck down the mob and save you from taking that damage at all. To be honest I don't remember having any flowing thought items until I was appraching the late 50s.

As for your comments on quests, there was a recent post (today I believe) about developer efforts to include substantially more quests into the game, including progressive quests from each class GM which (I assume/hope) would provide you with some class-specific gear as a reward. In terms of XP quests, there are quite a few in Dalaya, but they are scattered all around. One to look into is the Main Quest which you begin by reading the note and books you got in the dream. The first few levels of the prgressive quest are easily completed by lower level characters, and pay off with a 200k XP bonus. The wiki is an excellent resource for tracki gdown quest in your level range or in the zones you are hunting in.

I'm not familiar with the loot table on 30s level simple treasure maps, so I'm not sure if SKs or Wizards have the best of it there, but tmaps can be an excellent source of gear at any level, the rewards are usually worth the effort.

The SoD economy is fairly wonky rght now, and a lot of pretty high end items are going for a lot less than what most players feel they are worth. Take advantage of this while you can and stock up on gear, the proposed changes to items will have a lot of sellables becomng much more rare and expensive. Another option (more for the SK than the wizard) is to look into tradeskilled items. For your wizard, at the bottom of lake starfall there is a camp of goblins that all drop "netted" armor pieces, with some nice mana on them for lower levels.

I think one of the reasons that you see so many items that you feel are designed for other classes is that wizards don't NEED quite as many focus effects as the others do. Damage increment and mana conservation are your mainstays, and while elemental focuses are very nice, they're not very common at any level, it's not a lack at the low end. While you don't want to go paying out the ass for an item because of a focus you don't use, don't immediately discard an item just because it has an extraneous focus, if you fomelo me (Tyrone) I've got some pretty sweet companion 6 on my sleeves :toot:

More items and quests would be great and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone to disagree with you on that point, but I've tried to outline some strategies to help you until they arrive. I hope this helps you, I sure took a lot longer than I thought I would typing it out.