EQ TLP - Vaniki (Level-Locked Progression)

Damn... he's so cool

There's a significant amount of content that can be done with a group that has 1-3 charm pets and that simply cannot be done without charm pets. Other content can be done with a tank and healer but much slower and less efficiently. This server is not remotely balanced, but I can't imagine anyone thought it would be, you can charm mobs 17 levels higher than you and keep them charmed, it's not your normal EQ.

What makes it fun is even with how powerful charm is you're getting into frankly stupid situations, where your charmer can die almost instantly on a charm break if you're doing Barindu or something. What's interesting is things like stuns work to a much higher level now and land better, so you can work around the fact the pets are incredibly dangerous by having multiple people backing up the enchanter. The Berserker melee stun is super strong because it has no cast time and almost never resists on this server (it even works on some of the raid bosses that they never flagged explicitly stun immune, but that just can't be stunned on a regular TLP due to the level limits on a lot of the in era stuns.)

Any of the more seriously challenging content you're basically finding a new way to cheese it and tha'ts how it is done, which in itself is interesting because it isn't the "meta" of sitting in a static camp in Lguk at this level farming generic yellow con mobs.

The big issue they will run into is after about the level 60 lock era, the server gets into expansions where I think a lot of the cheese opportunities will drop to zero (particularly in raids) and the server will basically lack any purpose at all. Levels 55 and 60 both will probably be pretty cool on Vaniki though, and then people can move on to the new thing.

My 'main' combo is a sk/shm/nec/clr, not geared at all yet (SK has 3.3khp and 400ac buffed, cleric has 3 items (bailed out of the tutorial as i hate it once got bp and legs)) Hardest thing I've done is killing frogs in old seb, 10-11 levels higher. Doable due to things not being resisted as much, so slow usually lands and the shaman/necro dots. Not too slow but doable.

I've never really bothered with charm, so yeah, will be an adventure. Will see what I can get up to. Probably mostly death, but will see!

I'm thinking once 65 is unlocked and expansions up to TBS, there will be a lot of raid content to do, some of it level appropriate, some a bit more challenging and then some that is hard as balls. I think for the more casual players it won't be too bad. Those that want to only do the hard as balls content will suffer though i guess.

I think that combo will be able to do quite a bit, one thing to keep in mind is the Cleric's stuns are now more powerful than you are probably used to, incidentally Paladin is non-meme the actual best tank this server because they can stun lock stuff so hard and when you're tanking a deep red being able to keep him stunned 75% of the time is a huge decrease in its ability to hurt you.

I played a paladin on Rizlona, enjoyed it a lot but always missed my SK. Probably should have played a SK on Riz and kept the paladin for here, heh.

Yeah, cleric stuns are even more awesome than usual, mostly use them for interrupting gaters/healers, but handy to use on inc until slowed etc.

Rajaah said:

So calling out the raid leader in /rs takes less time/energy than "striking up a tell convo"?

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Are you fucking stupid? It was done over voice in discord.

No i don't have time to type while mezzing all of spiroc island.

Rajaah said:

Same here. I actually rolled an Iksar SK on EQ2 the same week I rolled an Iksar SK on Vaniki. Got to level 8 or so I think. It took like an hour in EQ2, was shocked at how fast the levels were going. I'll get back to it later. EQ1 is the game I've played the most and yet I never gave EQ2 the time of day. I'm really into the lore of EQ so I'd think I would have jumped on EQ2. A lot of why I didn't is probably the way it has a "timeline divergence" or whatever and then EQ1 goes ahead on its own timeline. So it's like...what's the point? It isn't actually a sequel to EQ anymore, it's this weird alternate timeline where the world was destroyed by PoTime shenanigans? Kerafyrm? Muramites? (I honestly don't know)



Oh okay. Definitely alright to disrupt a raid in voice.

Sometimes you just need to let people fail and then give them advice afterwards. Or better yet, put your hat in to raid lead yourself and do a better job than they are.

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I see what you're saying boss and I completely agree with your premise but this situation isn't how you're seeing it, I wasn't even being a dick just mentioning that certain things arent necessary or that we could try doing things another way (after wipes).

Prior to the posted chat I already discussed the matter and my role in the guild with the officers and told them that I wanted to help all long and that it's not in my best interest to interject anymore in how they do things on raids, basically I won't help with strats or how to do things anymore because it just leads to drama and is ignored anyways. I've been MIA since that sky raid and will continue to be for the foreseeable future until things either take a different direction or another opportunity comes along.

There's far too much drama and irritation in a lot of the other members that will boil over shortly and we'll go from there.

Most of the people on said sky raid already left the raid (officers included) in frustration which left us in that shitty situation to begin with (starting with 6 enchanters and ending with 2 by the time we got to spiroc island).

The fact I got this beratement from an officer that wasn't even there is just icing on the cake, like you're going to have a chat with someone on hearsay, when the rules for discord and raids are completely open to communication through voice in raids (most guilds have either an open discord or limited permissions) and I wasn't even close to the first or only person to suggest strats or challenge the strats, its all just so tiresome.

Tuco said:

Post-raid drama on forums is cold-water on my goal of getting back into the scene when my kids are older.

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It's normally not like this, the majority of raiders these days are very skilled and knowledgeable and shit just falls over. It's really mind blowing that this whole server is filled with shitters, my guild isn't the only one dealing with it, Apparently the other big guild on the server Warquest is having just as many problems.

I have been considering leading a guild but it's no small feat, between RL and managing recruitment, discord, raid comps, splits, tracking and DKP. Knowing how to do shit is one thing but building the infrastructure is another and maintaining that over at least a year is a lot.

Definitely cheering on the bees.

Zog said:

It's normally not like this, the majority of raiders these days are very skilled and knowledgeable and shit just falls over.

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Hmmm I dunno about that. I think there are still a shocking amount of people who flat out don't care about being good at EQ. As long as they can chat with the homies and smoke cigarettes whenever they want, they are perfectly happy.

Rajaah said:

This feels like a personal attack!

1. I care if the server is successful because once the population dwindles, the play experience also declines. Phinny has been running on fumes for about two years now (it was down to one guild as of early 2021) and the only reason I still play on it is out of loyalty / liking the people on there. Also the fact that I've cleared every expansion in EQ history on there, aside from the latest one which we have two events left in IIRC. The downside is, there's no bazaar economy and no one to group with outside of the 40ish people who play regularly in the one guild. I don't want to play on another server that'll similarly die off, though likely much earlier. So I'm really hoping they make some fixes to Vaniki and get the population moving again.

2. Most of the time when I flame out on TLPs it's just because Phinny is still taking up more of my time. If that server ever legitimately died out, I'd "main" another one. I thought Mischief would be the one since Phinny looked like it was on life support in early 2021, but here we are still clearing current content, so I stuck around. Vaniki being a "challenge server", at least on paper, piques my interest. So I want to make more of an effort with this one and I want it to do well so that there's a point.

I might totally flame out on this one too, who knows, but I'm hoping for it to be successful so that the option is there for a new server to "main". Chances of that are looking slim though. So at the end of the day I'm probably ending up in the same boat as you, playing it as long as it's fun and putting aside any expectations of it still being a thing in six months.

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I think that maybe says something you thought it was a personal attack. The legion of TLP re-rollers I have interacted with, serially, on server after server is huge in number. I have absolutely zero issue with serial TLP rerolling, but I do admit to getting annoyed at the serial rerollers who literally say again and again "this is my server" then flame out at the same place. I feel like the more honest ones have just taken to openly admitting "yeah, I'm here until XXX then I'm out." That's certainly how I approached Vaniki for example, I left zero illusions about how long term my interest is.

TBH I generally do take a dim view of people who are obsessed with server population. If you aren't RMTing, then if you're any kind of serious player as long as there's still an active guild, you can get anything in the game you want, and do anything you want. The people who for some reason seem to think the only way to properly play eq is if there's a lot of randos on the server (that they almost never interact with ever), befuddle me. As a guild leader I certainly have server population concerns as it relates to recruitment, but on the flipside we made it to live on a server that had been dead for 1.5 years or so, so the capacity a server has to get to before it becomes nonviable is pretty damn small.

A unhealthy server population for alternative servers may make DPG skittish about trying more and more unique rulesets -- especially when there's a direct comparison to a regular server that is much healthier, such as Vaniki to Yelinak. I would think there's a big financial difference there, particularly after factoring in dev resource time on the new ruleset. I think that's one area server population could matter but at least the current leadership at DPG seems to be willing to experiment more than the previous regime.

alavaz said:

Hmmm I dunno about that. I think there are still a shocking amount of people who flat out don't care about being good at EQ. As long as they can chat with the homies and smoke cigarettes whenever they want, they are perfectly happy.

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This is so true. People who have done 4+ TLPs and only join the top one or two guilds and stay in their cliques seem to not realize what the population can be like. There are a lot of casuals and a lot of people who will never try to be better than they were in 1999.