A buddy and me have been playing together on this server together last few months since migrated from p99 because of the lure of PoP in the future. I'm running a duo. Necro and Bard. My longtime buddy has a trio. Enchanter, Cleric, Beastlord. So I either am duoing my two chars or when he logs in we have a group of 5. We have no AAs and mostly kunark era geared so far. Been hanging mostly in Sebilis and that is how we're upper 50s now. Did some Karnor's earlier on - didn't like it. Have been avoiding HS so far because my buddy has one character he wants to keep VS faction for to shop in OT. HS is where I usually get 60 in necro on on other servers. I think the issue is we are stuck in a Kunark mindset in having spent time on p99. TAKP has so much more to offer than Kunark. What are some dungeon suggestions or exp spots to get those last couple levels in?
With the 5-man group you mentioned, Ssraeshza would be a solid zone for you in Luclin. Assuming your friend is comfortable charming, you can run AFK Mez on a Shissar Revenant pet and your friend can charm the Revenant. They can quad for 400 when given weapons basically melting every NPC in the zone. They come in SK and Necro variants the Necros only hit in low 300s but the SKs can hit up to 400. This dungeon doesn’t really have many named/loot camps like Sebilis but you can grind EXP very effectively in the mines which is a bit easier than the 1st floor which is a bit easier than the 2nd floor. Your beastlord should tank fine with slows/cleric heals. If none of this sounds fun to you, Umbral Plains would be good for both your duo and your 5-man group. The Necro/Bard duo could kite Elysians in the SE corner of the zone. They also come in 53 level variants you could charm on necro. If you got your full 5-man group there you could camp in the same spot or at the entrance. With 2 charmed pets you can clear mobs pretty quick here. Outside of those options you could do Maidens Eye, the levels are a bit lower than Umbral so it’s faster kills but less exp. If you find Umbral too difficult at your level you could try ME instead. For Velious you could try out Velketors or Dragon Necropolis as a 5-man. As your duo you could kill animals in Western Wastes though I’d definitely check out which guild has Kael on rotation and show up to their Statue/AOW raids and tag a few CoVeeshan faction hits to make yourself non-KOS in WW.
I don't know how this works on P99, but on TAKP there's an experience bonus for killing mobs within 5 levels of your own. The experience bonus is modest for killing a mob 5 levels below you, but scales up as the mobs get higher level, until it caps out for mobs 5 levels above you. With that in mind, a good leveling strategy is to find camps with higher-level mobs. You can find mob levels for a given zone on TAKP AllaClone. Click Zones > Continent > Zone name > Level Range. A few camps with lots of high-level mobs: Seb - reets and juggs Velk's - golems and gargs near the castle Chardok - much of the zone DN - rat city Ssra - second floor snakes CT - much of the zone (hard dungeon but good drops) Umbral - much of the zone I agree with Darch, though, that the easiest path to 60+AAs for your team would be charming Shissar Revenants in Ssra (near Rhag 1 on this map). Good ZEM, high-level mobs, and revs are great DPS. Find one that hits for 396 (charmable with Allure or by the necro), 398 or 400, give it two weapons and go to town. As you get more comfortable charming, give the rev a haste spell and/or a haste item.
Or throw it back a little more and do the undead tower in the hole with your five. Mob ranges are 52-54, they die incredibly quickly and the ZEM is bonkers. Lots of charming options with Necro/enc if you want and you can grab the ENC’s ghost while you’re there. They do summon and the SK variety HT, but they don’t hit particularly hard and not all are social. The crawl can be a pain but you can set a level 14 cleric with zero percent rez down there for a drag/recovery bot - or ask folks on the server that already have one set.
Great suggestions. Thank you to all that replied! We will check those zones out one at a time as we work to 60 and get AAs. One quick addendum: Any suggestions for places to camp for gear my Bard or buddy's Beastlord? Currently wearing Singing Steel pieces, but not BP. Or once we hit 60 is raiding the only route to worthy gear? Thanks again
Thurgadin and Skyshrine quest armor are good options for something to work toward, and then some camps in cazic Thule for some flowing thought, as well as some neat stuff in chardok (including your group DMF) and if you quest up some spirit wracked cords you’ll have the faction to move freely through the zone to snipe them camps you want. You can camp a drums of the beast and a lute of the howler for your bard. once PoP drops, there’s ornate armor to chase.
Necromancers can charm the same level mobs as enchanters can with Thrall of Bones, and do a better/easier job of it since Thrall lasts 20 minutes.
Necromancers means of dealing with a break (Screaming Terror's 2.6s cast vs Color Slants 1.5s) and lack of Tash makes it more difficult. But if you have a chanter friend in group its great!
I've been grinding my alt there a lot, and hate to cramp the spot, but Acrylia caverns is actually great xp and money. Just expect to eat a bajillion harm touches. You can kill 4+ grimlings in the amount of time it takes to kill 1 mob in umbral plains.
Agreed, different spells for different jobs. To be fair, when I charm revs they are always given two weapons and hasted, so color slant is irrelevant because I am absolutely never in melee range - I'm either kiting it or dead. Every rev I charm is permanently snared via my druid or ranger, at which point screaming terror is completely acceptable to refresh debuffs on breaks. Even with a stun, I'm still mezzing to debuff the rev - may as well just debuff the mob without the hassle of almost dying trying to channel a stun. Revs are low enough @60 that Tash is providing a negligible benefit. I have the same number of instant charm breaks on my necro as on my chanter. Necro also makes life much, much easier when I need to resnare the rev as well - I have died a non-zero amount of times on my enc attempting to break charm and resnare in tight quarters - with the necro, you just FD, no agro, problem solved.
This is not required. You can stun and de-buff the rev and re-charm all before stun wears off, no need to mez.
You are awfully optimistic in my ability to tab through three boxes to stun, tash, snare, Malo and charm on an 8 second cooldown!
I take back what I said about AC, its fine for aa's but my iksar just hit 57 and the xp per kill plummeted. UP was better last night.
Once things get outside of the 5 level range of you, the xp drops quite a bit. Even more so when they go LB. LB mobs are like 1/10th the xp of a DB mob. The money from selling runes though is pretty nice at the end of the day when you cash in.
