EQ TLP - Vaniki (Level-Locked Progression)

Ambiturner

Ssraeszha Raider
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A version of vaniki where the level cap starts at one and increases five levels a week until level 45, doesn't have ldon or other ez mode paths to gear and doesn't have special rules to make cc / charm on reds easy or so would be more interesting to me. Not sure how it'd play out and it'd probably meet the same end as Vaniki.

While they're at it they can only allow 640x480 resolution, all input is by keyboard only, and all the text is in Sanskrit.
 
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SorrowsEnd

Trakanon Raider
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I leveled a 6 stack to 40. That part was quite enjoyable and fun with the lowered resists and charm shenanigans.

On Saturday my friend and I each keyed our groups and we went to Sebilis for the time honored tradition of king farming. Killing shrooms and friends with just charm pet damage and the random mage/necro pets and spells was so tedious. It felt like a strugglebus for the sake of a strugglebus. I have no real interest in trying to gear out a group in no trade group trash after mischief. Free trade needs to just be standard.

Oh well OOW drops tomorrow.

Screenshot (220).png
 
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Elderan

Blackwing Lair Raider
592
407
Tuesday 10:45 PM est
  • Yelinak 2799
  • Vaniki 735
  • Mischief 1403
Posting these for reference since Mischief releases OOW tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how the numbers change. Does Mischief omens take people away from Yelinak or Vaniki and by how much.
 
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Zaide

TLP Idealist
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Tuesday 10:45 PM est
  • Yelinak 2799
  • Vaniki 735
  • Mischief 1403
Posting these for reference since Mischief releases OOW tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how the numbers change. Does Mischief omens take people away from Yelinak or Vaniki and by how much.
From the data I saw Yelinak pop has grown steadily since launch. Yesterday it had just a little under 2x the pop of Mischief (total, not concurrent). Looks pretty in line with your numbers though.
 

Rajaah

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Alternatively, instead of doing the mask quest above for Spell Haste II, healers can do these two:

Fine Antique Corset

Fine Antique Veil

Which get you an Improved Healing II mask and a Spell Haste II belt. Non-healers can just do the Fine Cut mask from the previous post to get Spell Haste II and have the belt slot free for the Intricate Tool Belt or something else.

There's also this one for DoT classes:

Fine Antique Pelisse

This should cover most of the relevant focuses, plus some BIS non-visibles.
 
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Rajaah

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BTW some of those collection quests are mega rare. The ring is easy but the others can be brutal.

The ones I linked above? Which ones are the worst? I'm gonna try to do all of them, with the worst last. Coulda probably wiped out some of them yesterday instead of trying to get a haste belt for six hours, man I'm so bitter about that

Vaniki is the most casual EQ experience there has ever been.

The XP rate feels almost the same as Selo's. Casters can land anything on pretty much anything. So the under-level gap hardly means anything within +15 levels. There is a ton of OP gear available for those that know how to use ZAM to search out OP items and quests. The Double Loot encourages people to roll around with groups, cause everyone is going to get their drops. You just end up steamrolling everything, especially when you have classes that can root, snare, or use charm tanks.

Basically what I am saying is, the headlines for this server are piles and piles of bodies under the AoW, but the real experience is ez mode EQ. LDON is so popular because it is a path of least resistance for OP gear. It is free wins for guaranteed gear slots that people can target. If we know anything about modern EQ, it's that the players will always select the path of least resistance.

My prediction is that people burn out fast. The level 40 cap was so incredibly stupid, because people were dinging 40 in <10 hours over the weekend. People aren't going to hunt gear upgrades with no other form of progression for months on end. When people have nothing to do or no reason to log on, they are going to quit or return to their other servers.

It blows my mind that they aren't doing a level 45 raise two weeks in. Sitting at 40 and then jumping to 50 is weird when all the other raises are by 5, and I don't think 40 can hold people's interest for four weeks.

It's certainly an interesting server. I can't say I've ever been able to reliably solo the Frenzy area at 40 before. With the resists lowered so much, I don't even know how much of a handicap the level gap is actually going to be once it closes to 10 levels from available targets (at level 55). The tough part is going to be tank survivability / numbers.
 
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Needless

Toe Sucker
9,180
3,273
The worst part of these collection q uests (the two miners at least) is theres an ~hour? cooldown between people being able to turn in the ores so its a little annoying

i've been having fun though just slowly lvling while farming since theres literally no rush lol druid just hit 40 mage is 37 now
 

Rajaah

Honorable Member
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I leveled a 6 stack to 40. That part was quite enjoyable and fun with the lowered resists and charm shenanigans.

On Saturday my friend and I each keyed our groups and we went to Sebilis for the time honored tradition of king farming. Killing shrooms and friends with just charm pet damage and the random mage/necro pets and spells was so tedious. It felt like a strugglebus for the sake of a strugglebus. I have no real interest in trying to gear out a group in no trade group trash after mischief. Free trade needs to just be standard.

Oh well OOW drops tomorrow.

View attachment 414989

-Get level 11
-Charm Sand Giant
-Sic it on rapid-respawning orcs around northeast oasis
-Ding 20 in an hour

This server is so bizarre
 
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Zog

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,729
2,250
Raids officially start for resurgence tonight.

Hit 50 on my enchanter on Monday and have jboots + another ring.

Just been farming hill giants since then, almost full loam which is fine to rep with planar.

Not really looking forward to sky raids but it is what it is. Tradeable keys made sky at least not as shitty but it's still just a long boring slog but people gotta get those epic pieces.

I'm still not sure whether to bother with ench epic, it doesn't look as bad as people make it out to be, obviously verina is the bottleneck but is it all really worth it? Meh.
 

Rajaah

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I went with the undead ruins in nro personally =)

Was thinking that, then went with SRO because I never see SGs up in NRO. But now that I think about it, SGs are probably a lot more available on here than usual.

Another cool thing about the undead ruins is that nothing runs away, so an SG can just plop right down there. I might have to try this myself.

Raids officially start for resurgence tonight.

Hit 50 on my enchanter on Monday and have jboots + another ring.

Just been farming hill giants since then, almost full loam which is fine to rep with planar.

Not really looking forward to sky raids but it is what it is. Tradeable keys made sky at least not as shitty but it's still just a long boring slog but people gotta get those epic pieces.

I'm still not sure whether to bother with ench epic, it doesn't look as bad as people make it out to be, obviously verina is the bottleneck but is it all really worth it? Meh.

I don't think ench epic is worth doing. However there are people who will disagree on that. I think it's one of the weakest and most annoying, along with necro. If a guild has one ench with the epic, that's enough. The best thing about it is that it saves you time doing the 2.0 prequest.
 

xmod2

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Verina and Vessel both drop double quest items on Vaniki. Does Velinak have the same double loot stuff? Already got book and rod, the annoying part was more the SMR since not as many people swarming lguk.
 

Rajaah

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A version of vaniki where the level cap starts at one and increases five levels a week until level 45, doesn't have ldon or other ez mode paths to gear and doesn't have special rules to make cc / charm on reds easy or so would be more interesting to me. Not sure how it'd play out and it'd probably meet the same end as Vaniki.

How about a four-month event server where the level cap starts at 1 and goes up by 1 every day. That'd be an interesting experiment, just to see what people do and how they handle the whole thing.

I'd like to see them try this next year as one of the two TLPs.

Four months in, the cap is 120, special Omen-type titles go to the first guild to kill Mayong at the end of the Dirge of Mistmoore expansion or whatever they call the Luclin-themed expansion we're getting later this year.

Considering how many live servers still haven't downed ToL six months later, there's a good chance it'll take a while before anyone beats the game on this event server even once the cap is 120. We'd need some really hardcore people ready to swing some pipe.
 

Kaines

Potato Supreme
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All this slowing down of leveling talk is stupid mental gymnastics when the original xp tables would completely solve the issue on their own. Of course those tables have been so completely overhauled since 2000 I doubt anyone actually remembers what those numbers should look like.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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All this slowing down of leveling talk is stupid mental gymnastics when the original xp tables would completely solve the issue on their own. Of course those tables have been so completely overhauled since 2000 I doubt anyone actually remembers what those numbers should look like.
I don't know what you think the "issue" is, but the issue from my perspective is that early expansions are trivial. You can get a few people with a pulse together and can curb-stomp everything. The attraction of level-locking is to create a game where players are motivated to go after the hardest and most rewarding content they can do.

Realizing this goal is non-trivial because players have so many tricks to get gear in boring content (LDON) or using boring and/or exploitive mechanisms, so it'd probably take effort DPG isn't capable of mustering. Additionally, this would result in an undesirable ruleset because most TLP players want trivial content.
 

Kaines

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I don't know what you think the "issue" is, but the issue from my perspective is that early expansions are trivial. You can get a few people with a pulse together and can curb-stomp everything. The attraction of level-locking is to create a game where players are motivated to go after the hardest and most rewarding content they can do.

Realizing this goal is non-trivial because players have so many tricks to get gear in boring content (LDON) or using boring and/or exploitive mechanisms, so it'd probably take effort DPG isn't capable of mustering. Additionally, this would result in an undesirable ruleset because most TLP players want trivial content.
But you are talking about level locks lasting for a single day. When the original xp tables had people effectively level locked at the 45+ range for multiple days. Especially in the Hell Levels. People were punching above their weight class out of necessity back then because you weren't going from 45 to 50 in 2 hours.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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But you are talking about level locks lasting for a single day. When the original xp tables had people effectively level locked at the 45+ range for multiple days. Especially in the Hell Levels. People were punching above their weight class out of necessity back then because you weren't going from 45 to 50 in 2 hours.
I don't understand what solution you're proposing and I think you still don't understand the issue I'm conveying.
 

Kharzette

Watcher of Overs
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Which ones are the worst?
gnaaaa sorry my power / net was out all night. A slight gust of wind and bit of mist is about all it takes here.

So the healing Veil, the hope diamond... Some people get lucky but the one time I did it it took many many many hours to find one. Then the very next mob had another, so maybe it was just bad luck.

Had similar problems with the forlorn totem for the extended range thing. Who the hell is Rolfron Zek anyway? Sounds like Vallon's redneck cousin.

I don't think I ever completed the burning affliction cloak. Maybe there's a trick to spawning spinflint?
 
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Kaines

Potato Supreme
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I don't understand what solution you're proposing and I think you still don't understand the issue I'm conveying.
If you want things to be harder simply because of level differences, returning to the 2000 xp tables, with Hell Levels fully implemented would do more than simply locking everyone to level 45 for a day.