Hey there! Pulled out my old 62 Druid after about 3yrs of retirement just a few days ago. Had a couple questions for you knowing veterans...

I find that I gave away most of my plat and quite a few items when I left. Also, I'm coming up on 63 and have none of the spells ready. So I'm needing to make some coin. I've discovered about 9-10 Sand Giant Elites down in SRo that I've been killing, and it's not too bad. Gives me something to do.

I also ran down to Rathe Mts intending to farm some giants there, but I cannot find them! The zone appears to have changed quite a bit over the last 3 years. Are they moved? Are they gone?

What else can a modestly equipped, Epic 1.0 62 Druid do for fairly easy coin these days? What are the hot new zones & mobs for us to camp/farm for gear/spell money?

Also...

Besides buying them in the bazaar or having to get a group and HOPE I win a role on a parchment, is there any other way to obtain the needed spells?

Thanks in advance, and it's good to be back. If you see me flying around on Luclin, say hi! :wiggle:


Wheatone DeMaster
Luclin Server
62 Druid

The giants in Rathe were moved. I think they are in the N/E part of the zone now. If not there are somewhere but still in the zone, lol.

For parchments, you could prolly solo in HoH basements. I know there is a thread with strats if you're unfamiliar with HoH. But at it's simplest you could root/rot one at a time. Getting to the basement, or learning how to safely, is the hardest part. The black armored mobs cant be snared or rooted and some see thru invis. And out of the 4 basements which ones are best. The S/W one you cant solo in. I always liked the N/E one.

Welcome back......you might be able to try your hand at Sebillis or Dulak's harbor (or that zone where you do the bloodquest spell thingie) lots of gems dropped there and omg Griegs rains gems!

Of course there is tried and true pelts from othimers or if you dont want to mess up faction wyrveryns.

What server are you on?

If you link a magelo profile (they have a new beta one too which is awesome) we could give you gear suggestions....I made a brand new druid from scratch 6months aga and with my friends and being dilligent am now a 72 druid with 9800mana buffed (10.5 k hps buffed)

I found the giants in Rathe. Just to the east of the Feerot zone on top of the hill. Too much cluter over there though with the giant skellies, small skellies and various other things wanting to agro. Plus there was a couple of 40-somethings there trying to kill them, so I didn't interfere since they need the exp and likely the money worse than myself.

I did discover a couple things yesterday though that made things easier. I discovered that darn near all of my DOTs now stack! I had been only stacking 4, now I realize I can stack 8! That should help a bit for Root-Rot mobs.

I also slipped out to Cobalt Scar and work on quadding(Great place to practice), and found I'm still fairly good at it. Just need to find me a spot now with some mid-upper 50 mobs with low enough HP that I can make a little exp and hopefully some coin at the same time.

I've taken what little coin I had sitting in the bank and purchased a few items, so I should be alright for a little bit. Just mainly concerned with getting spells ready for the next couple levels is all. They sure are expensive. Moreso than I remember. 10k for lvl 63 charm or DOT spells??

Sheesh.

Anyways, I'm having a good time and getting back in the groove! :)

Some tidbits to be aware of as you move forward:

1) PoP, GoD, and OoW spells are expensive b/c they are all obtained by rune turnins or through spell research skill.
2) Your DoN spell is quested, pretty much single groupable these days,
3) Your DoDH spells are quested, but you'll probably need raid-geared friends to get some of the missions knocked out. Same with PoR spells.
4) TSS spells are vendor-purchased - or at least their first ranks are.

But before you plan to grind all the way to 75 just to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of plat for your 62-70 spells, you should also be aware that at level 75, the fastest rate of AAXP gain available in the game is roughly half what it is at level 70. Over the longer term, it's probably more efficient to grind out at least a few hundred AA at level 70 before moving on to 75, or at least thats what I would do if I were going through those levels again. Also, since your DoTs stack, and some of your debuffs from PoP/OoW eras were not upgraded in TSS, you'll want to pick those up along the way.

Cheap, vendor-purchasable upgrades (via DoN crystals) are available that will get your gear to PoP elemental level (130/130 hp/mana). You probably want to avoid bazaar traders trying to sell TSS attuneable gear in the 160/160 to 210/210 range - this is the best tradable gear around, but honestly there are far cheaper ways to get gear that's just as good. For one thing, attuneable gear with those stats is really REALLY common in TSS and bazaar prices generally do not reflect that yet this early in the expansion. For another, the DoDH expansion has many single group missions where everyone in the group gets a GUARANTEED reward of 200/200 loot upon completion. For yet another, the equivalent of TSS "ornate" armor is 240/240 gear.

If I were you I would probably buy your PoP/GoD nukes, heals, DoTs, debuffs, and root, grind to 70 in DoN (picking up crystals along the way) and buy only your OoW DoTs, nukes, and heals, plow out 200-300 AA (grouped in the Nest at level 70, you can crank out 4-5AA an hour with a good group) in DoN and DoDH (picking up mission rewards and your DoN/DoDH spells along the way), then buy all the TSS spells and grind to 75.

Killing guards in the HoH basement is easy. Also easy to get there, it's only rarely that there are any See Invis mobs on the way there.

Here's the map of HoH from EQ Atlas (http://www.eqatlas.com/planes/hallsofhonormap.html).

You enter the zone at middle/east side (where map is marked with z.i./z.o.).
Invis up and run to the room you can see is marked with Alekson Garn; south-east corner.

Alekson Garn isn't KoS and you can't cast on him so don't worry about aggroing him. In that room there are 4 guards/guardians that are always snareable. It's easy to single pull the 2 guards on either side of Alekson Garn, but you can't single pull the 2 on either side of the door (unless you use harmony, it's an outdoor zone).

If you have a decent mana pool you can quad the room easily. They are on approx. 20 minute respawn. The room adjacent to Alekson Garn room can also be pulled, however you might run into one that is unsnareable at times. I can't remember the name of the unsnareable one though.

It's decent cash since they drop vendor trash that sells for a good amount of pp (books, swords or something like that). They also drop Ethereal Parchments (61-62 spells) and Spectral Parchments (63-64 spells) and Hero Parts. Hero Parts sell very fast in Bazaar, or you can use them yourself for baking.

Grinding in HoH is a waste of time after 65 though. Way too little XP.

First buy some crystals at bazaar and use them to buy you a level 61 snare spell (name is 'thorn mine'?) in the new lavastorm zone. This one is rarely resisted and lasts 3 minutes. Cast this then use ensnare to overwrite it.

Then you need the druid ornate legging for a mana-free root. The patchment can be puchased in bazaar. Also get a mana-free dot from ES arm or Velious wrist piece.

You should have a free mount coming with purchasing the new expansions.

Now go root-dot in HOH basement. snare, root, sit on horse and do the dots. Have a hot key ready to unmount and re-root. Don't conserve mana. Stack as many dots as you can (fire dots don't stack with each other though) and finish it with a DD. Your mana recovers a lot faster when you are out of battles.

(fire dots don't stack with each other though)
Hmm, it's a long time since I checked this but, as far as I recall all DoT's stack, except if the have a debuff component as well. For example Breath of Ro (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=1600&source=Live) would not stack with Immolation of Ro (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.html?id=3437&source=Live), but they will stack just fine with the Vengeance line (which is also fire) and all in the Vengeance line will also stack with each other.

Ofcourse, unless I remember wrong there's a limit of so many detrimental spells that can affect one NPC at the time, I seem to recall having read something about it a long time ago?