The Art and Science of PowerlevelingFollow

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.

Ok, for whatever reason, you’ve decided to help a lower level friend coast through a few levels. Putting aside the reasons why this may be a bad idea (those have already been mentioned), how can you make this happen? There are more than a few methods to discuss.

For the sake of convenience, we’re going to give the players in this scenario names. Mike is the lowly character hoping to rise rapidly through the ranks, and Anna is the godly high level character who is willing to spend a little time helping him get there.

#1 Twinkage
The colloquial term “twink” is used to refer to a character with armor and weapons far exceeding the items normally available at the character’s current level. Older players often twink their new alts in the bazaar, spending thousands of plat to get the very best gear their new character will be allowed to use. Such a character is said to be “twinked” or “twinked out”. In and of itself, this is not power leveling, but it serves to make earlier levels almost trivial even with the character going out and soloing. For the earliest levels, it’s often important to select gear with no recommended or required level. The Smoldering Brand is a classic example of a “twink” weapon. It’s a 9/22 one hand blunt weapon, usable by all classes and races, with a proc effect “burn” that can cause an additional 12-13 damage when it goes off, and it does so right from level one. It’s not that useful past the teens, but for the very early levels, it can make kills very quick.

#2 Buff loading
Buff loading is exactly what it sounds like – having a buff class cast pretty much every beneficial spell that will stick on Mike, raising his statistics to godly levels and making early content relatively trivial. Again, this is not usually considered power leveling as such, as that term usually reflects a situation where a higher level player stays with the character to assist on a constant basis.

#3 Agro locking
Agro locking is a situation where Anna attempts to hold the mob’s attention while Mike kills the mob in relative safety, usually from behind. In this scenario, taunt skills and debuffing spells/songs are used to hold agro without actually doing damage to the mob. Some of the higher agro spells that can be used for this purpose are snares, slows, statistic debuffs, fears, and intentionally broken charms. For healing classes, heals also provide a very high level of agro, so merely keeping yourself at high health after you’ve initially acquired agro may be enough to hold it.

#4 Nursing
Nursing is a situation where a cleric, shaman, or druid merely tags along with Mike, keeping him constantly healed and out of danger while taking on harder content. It’s not the fastest power leveling method, but it’s better than soloing for the xp rate.

#5 Nuking/Tanking (aka 50s)
Nuking or tanking for power leveling is fairly straight forward. XP for a mob goes to the player or group that has done the most damage to that mob when it dies. This means that if Mike does 51% of the damage to a mob and Anna does 49%, Mike will get all of the xp, as long as you are not grouped. There are a couple of caveats to this, however – the first being that all of the damage done to a mob is counted when figuring out xp assignment. This means if Mike does 60 damage to a target with 100 hp total, and Anna finishes it off with a 300 pt nuke, he’s not going to get the xp, because Anna did more damage than him, even though the mob was technically dead 260 hp ago. Also, certain effects, like damage shields, are not counted in crediting who has done the most damage to a mob, so if Mike does 40 damage to a mob and the damage shield he’s wearing did 25 damage, Anna can still only do 39 points of damage to the mob without stealing the kill. Note that this method can also be a good way to hold agro – in this scenario, Anna would nuke or tank the mob down to 51% and the mob would be agroed on her while Mike finished it off.

#6 Pincushioning
In a pincushion scenario, Anna takes advantage of the fact that damage done to a mob by a damage shield is counted as neutral damage. As long as Anna does no damage to the mob directly, and Mike does at least 1 point of damage to the mob, when the mob finishes grinding itself to death on the damage shield, Mike will get all the xp. This can be hugely effective if Mike or someone in his group has an AE damage spell. Anna could potentially go and agro 20 mobs with an AE debuff, then retreat to a corner and cast her damage shield. Once Anna has firm agro, Mike pulses his smallest AE damage spell on all the mobs to avoid drawing too much agro away from Anna, makes sure that there are no resists from the mobs in question, and waits for the mobs to grind themselves to death on Anna’s damage shield. In lower levels, a single pull can generate multiple levels of xp this way. Two important notes on this method – mobs that have taken damage only from the damage shield will simply vaporize without giving loot or xp, so it’s important to make sure that each mob has been successfully hit at least once. If you are using melee to hit rather than an AE spell, it can be effective to have the person hit each mob while you are building the mass of mobs, right after you’ve established agro with each. The other thing you should be aware of is the corner I mentioned earlier. Spell interruptions are largely based on movement and knockback, so positioning yourself in a corner, facing outward to your target mobs, can greatly increase your chances of pulling off a heal or damage shield spell while masses of mobs are beating on you.

#7 Charm breaking
One of the quirks of charm spells is that when a mob is charmed, all current damage to the mob from other mobs, for xp purposes, is wiped. This means if Anna charms a mob and throws it against a bunch of other mobs until it has been beat down to 2%, then breaks charm, Mike can take care of the last 2% and get the xp for the mob. This is a bit slow at lower levels, and rarely worth the time invested, but at higher levels it can be a good way to quickly rack up kills.

#8 Zone out
A similar quirk is that when a character zones out, all damage done is wiped for xp purposes. This means that Anna could knock a mob down to 2%, then zone out or evac to effectively wipe the damage she’s done so that Mike can finish the mob off. Any effect that causes Anna to reload the zone is valid for this method, so while a gate spell won’t work (doesn’t reload), an evac (or levant or whathaveyou) will.

#9 Feigning
Classes that get feign death make especially good power levelers for high levels. Yet another quirk of the game is that if you are feigned, the mob doesn’t count you anymore for xp crediting purposes. This can be a little tricky, and only seems to work reliably if the person being power leveled holds off on damaging or agroing the mob until after you have feigned. Probably has something to do with having them on the hate list when you feign. (Avoid using dots, or at least dots that will last past the time that you need to feign – screws up xp crediting) Anna just nukes or tanks the mob down to low health, feigns, and calls Mike over to do cleanup.

#10 Hand ins
Some well known quests provide a decent amount of xp for lower levels. Turning in bone chips in nearly any starting town, crushbone belts in Kaladim, and lightstones in North Karana are all examples of droppable items a higher level characters can collect and hand to the lowbie to generate faction and xp. Alternately, there are several higher level quests that require no drop items but still give decent xp. An example of this would be the sarnak berserker whips in the overthere. A high level character can easily wipe out a bunch of berserkers and allow the lower level character to loot all the whips.

Well, that’s pretty much the long and short of power leveling. I hope that this guide has helped you, or at least given you a bit to think on. Good hunting to you all!


Edited, Wed Jun 8 15:05:58 2005 by Neolith

Precisely why I listed the disadvantages first and encourage people to play their first few characters for real. This is not intended to make more Ebay style residents of Norath, but rather to present information. Power leveling exists, whether you like it or not. Having all of the information at hand can only be beneficial.

Consider:

If the L50 cleric sitting behind you knows what he is doing, do you really care whether he made that xp in a week (after playing several other characters) or 6 years?

Similarly, and hopefully, if newbie #1 comes across this guide and actually reads it when starting their first character, possibly he'll consider what he is giving up by being PLed and elect not to be or at least limit the number of levels he skips past.

I, for one, don't enjoy doing the same low level zones again and again, and I have EQ ADD - I've just filled the 8th slot on my second server. Once you hit the 30s, there are a lot more worthwhile zones to choose from, but those first few levels can be a pain to do again and again.

Just another perspective for you.

Thanks to Jiggidyjay for posting SOE's outlook I could have been banned for swimming in a corner, though its not likely but, who wants a banned account over something so stupid.

Our End User License Agreement is very clear that any third party program that modifies the game play of EverQuest is against our policies and accounts found to be using such programs will be terminated without any refunds. To prevent any confusion with our logs or members of customer service while you are multi-boxing then you will need to run them in separate instances where you can use Alt-Tab to cycle between them. Sony Online Entertainment has always considered the use of programmable Game Pad devices are not a violation of our policies since they are an input device, however if the account is found to be gaining experience or skills while the owner is away from the keyboard by using the features of such devices, then we will take action as if the accounts are using a third party program

Aye! Ban em all for that damn spam! ;)

For melees I prefer what you call pincushioning. They work up their melee and defensive skills as they level.

For casters, nursemaid is the way to go. Buff them as much as you can and have your fastest heal loaded. They work up their casting and defensive skills better that way.

I would never, ever advise PLing a first-time character. Their expectations get all out of whack and they miss out on far too much. I'll buff them up once, throw them a heal if they ask, but I wouldn't stay around and safeguard them after that. Same goes for twinking, for similar reasons.

For subsequent characters, though, I'm all for it. Shoot through the newbie levels and hide out in some obscure zone.

Here is one method of powerleveling that I've used and not seen mentioned. As a magician I summon pets that do not use up a malachite. I then have the pet beat a mob nearly to death, then reclaim the pet. My powerlevelee then goes in and finishes it off. It takes 0 mana and results in very little downtime. The PLee can sit and med while I'm pulling using Malinosi or the like.

Since this has been revived, I've got another trick to share.

A friend took his level 2 toon to icefall and picked up the groundspawn (it's be the BL spell merchants) for the serpent seekers charm, turned it in for multiple 'levels' of xp. Think he said it took him to 10....and it involved no help from others, only purchased invis pots.

shadow, I don't know where you got it in your head that EQ was strictly a 'grouping' game. One of the 'grabs' for me is, I can log on for 1/2 hour and go solo for an AA, or I can log on for an evening, get together a group and go have an adventure. I dug that about Vanguard too (I'm missing my Vg Sorceress..).

I know this from personal experience. I had no swimming skills and started on my shaman epic. after reading up on it, i realized it would be much helpful to skill up my swimming. I took our toons to PoK, jumped in the pool, and taped the keys down to swim in a circle. This worked fine, and i sat at the computer's watching the skill ups slowly come. Sorta like watching paint dry.

About 20 minutes later, i got a tell asking if everything was ok, on both toons. I also remember the person sending the tell had a green name over their head. I had never seen that before, and did not realize this was a GM.

I am glad i stayed at the computers, and after talking to him and other people, i found out that he was making sure i was not afk skilling up. I do not know if i would have been banned, but am glad i did not take the chance.

I also PL'ed a cleric from 1 to 65 in 3 weeks, with the help of some friends. i also used the ideas of creating skill hot buttons, and i am sure many guildies got sick of the spell spam i was doing in the guild hall, but playing a shaman, and having friends help me learn to play a cleric, i feel the cleric is not to shabby, and can hold her own.

PL'ing is boring, and a PITA. however, as there is no low end game(i tried to do groups before i gave up and PL'ed) you almost have no choice if you want to play this game.

I twink regularly,
I usually spend between 500k and a million plat per toon that i twink.
The reason i like to twink is it gives me a break from my main (maxpowers).
I have been playing for years ans im maxed AAs and lvls, twinking is like a hobby. i like to see how fast i can lvl up my toons, my current record is going from 1-47 in a day then to 65 the next day. My technique is getting the hp jewelry gear from the bazaar that has 19ac 350hp/mana/end 23 all stats and resists lvl 1 usable (its called dwerium). then filling the void with things like white dragon helm/blade of carnage if i got a sword slinger and maby a vendi breastplate or cloak of the falling stars from kael. The first day i get a bunch of potions of skinspikes from the bazaar and tear up pudal caverns till lvl 25 by running around and hitting each mob once. after pudal i go to dawnshroud peaks and kill the shrooms the same way, youll get a yellow per kill because there red and its a hotzone. i stay in dawnshroud till lvl 37 then go to velks. In velks is where i start to pl my toon using my monk to FD. once the toons lvl 51 the real fun begins in WOS. i group with my monk and the toon gets a blue per kill up to lvl 66. i have 3 accounts full of lvl 65+toons, but i dont really play them. its a result of my self challenge to see how fast i can pl a toon to lvl 65. The single best twink ive ever made
had 10khp at lvl 55, hes lvl 66 atm on the xegony server where i do all my dirty twinking lol. If you have any questions or wana talk about twinking
E-mail me at wilbunk@yahoo.com or send me a tell on maxpowers on Xegony :)

Can you provide a link to this dwerium jewelry? the stuff i see has no augs and i am not entirely sure what you are talking about.

I have a 66 druid, a 65 chanter, a 58 cleric and a 75 necro, all on different accounts. Man is it easy for me to PL my alts! =P

Not sure, but I think he's referring to the Protect the Shipyard quest.

Not sure how the experience would be, though I'm guessing at low levels it would be quite nice. The only time I've ever done it is to raise faction for the OT gate hammer.

Faction would be a problem for this turn in, depending on race and religion.

Just make sure you are not KOS to the turn in mob. Bring high level back up if you are kos to the golems and dark elves.