SoF - easiest way to fill the spellbook

[Vasei]

Elder paws than mine have put up great posts with thorough information, but as someone just coming back, leveling up, and having no idea what to do about spells - it took me a bit to figure/cobble together how to be a functional shaman in the new EQ. I'm sure I'm missing bits, or maybe some of this is wrong...

Dragonscale HIlls
vendor Ellymil Cogswin (no faction required)
* 76 - Vestax's Spear of Venom
* 76 - Spirit of Vehemence
* 76- Talisman of Vehemence
* 76 - Breath of Big Bynn
* 76 - Spirit of the Stalwart
* 77 - Malosinatia

vendor Alissa Saint Claire (or Seridyn?) (Ally with Ladies of Light)
* 80 - Ward of Resurgence Rk. II

Loping Plains
vendor Kedem Teague (no faction)
* 77 - Vegu's Faithful
* 77 - SOF - Feralisis

* 76 - Talisman of the Cougar
I - drop from Bloodmoon Mystic
II - vendor Derak Fangbreaker (Ally with Fangbreakers)

Fortress Mechanotus
vendor Inizen Nogglezop: Rank I's (no faction)
* 78 - Bloodworg Focusing
* 78 - Gemmi's Restoration
* 78 - Halcyon Zephyr
* 78 - Ancestral Hearkening

Hills of Shade
vendor Naene Ebonlocke: Rank I's (no faction)
* 79 - Tundra Crumble
* 79 - Talisman of the Stalwart
* 79 - Rancor of Agony
* 79 - Pocus
* 79 - Chant of the Darkvine

Seyan Ebonlocke: Rank I's (no faction)
* 80 - Vengeance of Kerafyrm
* 80 - Preincarnation
* 80 - Talisman of the Bloodworg
* 80 - Shade of Renewal
* 80 - Thorn Wilting

* 78 - Ancestral Intervention
I - drop from Kritha villager, undead elf
II - vendor Hardrin (Kindly with Camp Valor)
* 78 - Bite of the Brownie
I - ghouls
II - vendor Karri (Ally with Rebel Brownies)
* 77 - Rolist's Drowse
I - ghouls
II - vendor Karri in The Steam Factory (Kindly with Rebel Brownies)
* 77 - Languor
I - drop from a Kirathas villager & Kaestille Pureheart (and ? in Gyrospyre Z)


The Steam Factory
* 80 - Ward of Resurgence
I - drop from a steamwork mechanic & a steamwork trooper

I've condensed other posts, and removed anything that looked like a more difficult method of attaining the same spell (I'm considering plat to be the 'easy' method).

I moved the sketchy stuff to the bottom. I'm not sure if the factioning or the random drop method is easier/faster. Maybe someone can shed a bit of light - I'm kind of hoping for some driblets of wisdom from the community, as some of these look to be fairly unattainable without help.

PS - Finally posting, and getting a chance to thank you guys for many years of wisdom, insight, and laughs.

[HawklordXegony]

Bite of the Brownie Rk. II isn't Hardrin. I believe it's Karri (Rebel Brownies). Hardrin sells Ancestral Intervention Rk II if I recall. Use http://www.kela.tv to fill in the blanks in your post. Yours is still a good post, though, since it's all the information in one place.

[Merkreus]

Bite of the Brownie rank 1 seems to be specifically the ghouls that spawn in the catacombs in Hills of Shade. There are only a handful that spawn and they are kind of deep.

And it is correct that rank 2 is from rebel brownie faction vendor, not camp valor.

[Vasei]

Thanks! I don't want to confuse things with extra posts, but they really did manage to make spell acquisition a bit of a puzzle this time around. No complaints, though. It's fantastic to be able to HAVE my spells without all the camping and fuss. I much prefer these incremental improvements.

[Brohg]

As maze-like as it may seem at first glance, I'm a HUGE fan of the blended acquisition systems. I'm hoping it continues in the next expansion, and even adds on some directly quested rk2/3s.

[Unmei]

Rolist's Drowse also only drops off ghouls. Neither I nor Magelo have ever seen it on another mob.

Languor seems to be yet another "any undead elf" drop.

[Vasei]

Thanks for all the tips. Of course, I'll probably have an easier time getting brownie faction than hauling a group out to HoS. It doesn't look too terribly soloable out there (for me, anywho).

[meadal]

Talisman of the Bloodworg dropped for me in Crystallos...Fire wing way deep in the room where Squire can spawn...sorry not positive which kind of mob dropped it a gropie was cleaning corpses and looted it...could have been a fire drake or a prismatic wyvern or even a servant of the ancients.

[kuzko]

[Vasei]

Thanks for the rundown! You can bet I'll be referring to it a few times, till that rhythm you mentioned kicks in.

Being on Test, I don't have to worry about competing for spawns... ever, really. When I hit HoS to buy my Rank 1's, I was the only person in the zone (well, ok, it was kind of a dead time of morning). I guess my big concern is my gear (fairies in DSH can screw me up pretty badly if I get unlucky on resists), so I'm a bit apprehensive about straying too far from lt blues.

Sounds like I need to get adventuresome, though. If LoL faction is that easy in LP, I need to get the heck out of DSH.

[kuzko]

This is my spell layout for solo'ing since hitting lvl 80 (obviously altered with lower lvl spells, but gives you the idea).

Save one spell set as 1 SoloDot 1 (I put numbers at the beginning of these 2 so that they are always at the top of the list of saved spell sets). I also have hotkeys to switch between this and 2 SoloDot 2.

This spell set is :
Ancestral Hearkening
Putrid Decay (-200 disease resist check) Can use Malicious Decay if you want unresistable, but I've never had PD resisted solo'ing.
Halcyon Zephyr (emergency healing, I typically only use epic click, ancestral aid Union of Spirits and spear of doom soloing, less mana used, less down time)
Malis
Pocus
Juju
Curse of Sisslak
Rancor of Agony
Rancor of Pain
Nectar of Pain

Since it's free I use Turgur's Swarm to slow, for the 1 in 200 (or more) chance that something breaks VP after PD/MD.

2 SoloDot 2 is:
Ancestral Hearkening
Vengeance of Kerafyrm
Halcyon Zephyr
Vengeance of Ankhual
(the rest is the same)

Sequence is PD: run like hell to kill spot: (do the following only with slower mobs, be careful with worgs in LP, Canni: Summon Horse:) Malis: Swarm: CHANGE TO DOTSET 2.
Pocus: Juju: Curse: Rancor of Agony: Rancor of Pain: NoP: Vengeance of Ker: Vengeance of Ank.
By the time you hit last dot, VoAnk, your magic dots will start to fade and just refresh it all as it fades.

With proper timing and some detremental extension and DoT aa's, you run an 8 dot stack that takes out a helluvalot. HoS mobs need VP to be at new max, even with 8 dot stack it takes more than 2 min, but not more than 2.6 min.
Be careful in HoS at boneguards of the scarecrows, they are solo'able, and not that bad, fewer hps, but they have a very annoying stun that slows things down (have resisted it a few times). They do give bert chosen faction, not camp valor, so avoiding them is best to maximize faction hits to the pallys.

In the case of faster running mobs, only summon horse at the top. Boneguards are like molasses and you can easily canni and summon mount in time to VP. I have an easily accessible hotkey for /dismount in case of root break or multiple pulls. I always have PoP ornate root pants on when soloing for multiple pulls or emergency adds or root breaks. The loss of stats etc is minimal compared to the "stay the hell away from me" factor. Like I mentioned in the above post, AA invis is very handy for pulling thru non-social aggro mobs. I never actually tested if boneguards and scarecrows had social aggro. I just didn't want to risk it due to pumpkinhead stuns.

If there is a faster way, I'd like to know. This is the most efficient solo'ing line up I've found after lurking on boards for years.

[Veril]

I use the following, and don't bother to switch the spellbook, I find it a lot easier not to have to do this. When I do the switching I find always forget to switch back at some point.

Heal, Hot, Canni, Malosinitia (I have the BP that reduces resist rate)
Pocus, Juju
Rancor of Agony, Rancor of Pain, Nectar of Pain, Vengeance of Kerafyrm

I use potions for +1 tick - 300 mins of this is a lot. Buff Regen - the HP from it really add up over its duration as I am almost never on full HP. My main root is the root pants. VP is my emergency get out of jail free root for when things go wrong. Swarm is the slow. For LotD (or similar) I drink Clariy and Spirituality potions, outside of that I just take 3 mins rest and recovery every 30 mins.

Pull with sinitia, then click root. Mobs are rooted before they arrive if pulled from longish range, if I get 2, then VP the second. Then lay down a full dot array, with magic dots first. In spell recovery time I click AA slow, canni. Re root after all dot's in. After they start to wear off I reapply magic dots, depending on the mob and zone I am in, I will reapply 1-4 poison dot's as needed.

[Macnair]

First of all, it looks to me like Veril's system would kill mobs a little faster than mine. I routinely have a mob dying about as VP refreshes (which gives me three ticks for it to actually finish dying before VP expires); so the cycle from pull-this-mob to pull-next-mob is between 2 min 15 seconds and 2 min 30 seconds for me. I would guess that Veril's cycle is just under 2 minutes.

Second, I recommend learning to stay on horseback all the time, including while pulling. It takes a little getting used to -- maybe half an hour or so -- and then it becomes normal. There IS some acceleration / deceleration effect, which you need to allow for. But you can go from full gallop to stopped and casting pretty quickly like this: release the forward arrow, tap the back arrow, and pivot. By the time you are facing the mob, you have killed all your momentum and can successfully cast. The two advantages of this are: you are always moving at horse speed (significantly faster even than worgs), and you are always medding.

I have been using putrid decay and five poison dots. The dots land very reliably, , and VP has only broken early on me once in the last few months. With an Efficiency Awareness V potion and crit dot aas, most of the mobs in Loping Plains take 5 dots on first cast, then 4 dots on refresh. At this point I can almost always tell, as I am refreshing the dots, whether I will need to refresh the fifth dot also.

But I am going to give Veril's method a try. With six dots running the mobs should die just that little bit faster. This would be no advantage if I had to wait 15 seconds for VP to refresh before pulling the next mob; but using clicky pants, there would be no need to wait for that, and it should be possible to kill 15 (16?) mobs in 30 minutes. (Well, 29 minutes and 36 seconds, since LotD routinely fades when you have about 24 seconds left on the timer.)

[Veril]

If you can get it try the Lt. Kulthar camp, it's all singles and doubles. Needs 1 full cycle of dot's and then normally 1-2 dot more. I can keep the whole camp clear less 1 mob consistantly (including the 4 tents to the side). When I get double pulls I end up killing both just after VP fades. No rest or downtime at all for the 30 mins of LotD. I often end up using Kiss to keep mana up.

[Vasei]

Thanks again. The name of the site can change, but you guys are still here with all the answers.

Sounds like I need to max VP first thing - I had no idea you could basically count on the kill before it wears off - what a huge improvement. My hp are about half of yours, Veril... so I'm not sure if this will be a practical thing for me to hit until I can get my gear caught up.

I'll start working on horse-pulling - and I can finally put that AoN to a better use than annoying people with the skeleton laughin sound.

[Macnair]

I have not maxed VP.

VP 3 gives you a few extra seconds between when VP refreshes and when it expires. That's long enough to reroot the mob (if you're paying attention and not busy casting something else). But I don't like to reroot like that. Instead, I want to use the newly refreshed VP on a new mob, and not use it up on a mob that will be dead in another few seconds and then I'll have to sit around waiting for the next refresh.

Still, VP 3 did not last long enough for me to be sure the mob would be dead when it wore off. So I got VP 4.

VP 4 gives another couple of ticks of rooting, long enough for me to be confident that the mob will have died before VP breaks. I think maybe one time in ... 50? more? it will have enough health left that I have to reroot it to finish dying: and that's almost always because I got careless and didn't notice that I had fizzled a dot, and therefore hadn't applied enough killing power.

So I have not bothered to get VP 5 or VP 6.

Depending on your focus and dot crit aa, you might need the extra time that VP 5 would give you to finish off a mob. It's not obvious to me that this would be the case, though, and so I would not encourage you to rush right out and buy VP 5: test out VP 4 for a while and see how that works. As for VP 6, it looks to me like it would be overkill (overroot?) for most everyone: the mob would have been dead for several ticks before VP 6 would be scheduled to wear off.

[Vasei]

Kind of an interesting reverse-usefulness situation. For someone like me, with < 400 aa, the higher ranks of VP are going to be a lot more useful, because my lack of affliction aa means the mob will live longer. I guess I need to get used to respec'ing more often.

What I wouldn't give for the ability to have AA templates, so I could just swap between raid and XP configs without 350 clicks... Or even raid/group/solo...

[Unmei]

The main reason to buy VP4 has nothing (or little) to do with Root rotting. The faster cast time on VP4 is nice.

[Tordail]

[Unmei]

[Tordail]

[Brohg]

Potions add a tick, boosting total damage but not dps. Tribute affliction efficiency helps efficiency a lot, but again, not dps. He has to AA his way into all the crits the real way, and go loot his own damage focus. Higher foci than ever before can be acquired in a non-raid format, but there isn't really a shortcut.

[Tordail]

I had thought he could tribute Power of Suffering (ie. Burning Affliction) and use it to tide himself over until he could loot a damage focus or get the proper AA's.

[Brohg]

No magelo, is he lacking even basic droppable foci? Magician summoned bracelet has burning affliction, "fer gosh sakes".

[Tordail]

That, I don't know.

[Renia]

[Unmei]

[Vasei]

Yep, that's me, the gear is accurate, unfortunately. Finally updated my level tho. And yes, my focus situation is pretty bad.

This is the problem with taking long breaks. I come back and all the gear I knew how to get is so bad it's laughable.

It's kind of a double edged sword on Test. If I want mobs, they're probably up. But if I need a group to kill em, that takes more effort than it used to on a production server. Anyway, I'm looking forward to working myself up to the point of being able to take all this great advice.

[Tordail]

I am still interested in this respec'ing thing you mentioned.

[Retron]

[Samanna]

Ah, yeah... does that reset them all, or only the "bought" ones, leaving you at your /copy image?

[Vasei]

Sorry, I thought live was able to /resetaa as well - just not as often. Respec is the WoW term - because you were able to pay gold to set your aa (er, talent) purchases to zero and rebuy everything.

So far as I know, the eq command will only wipe everything, and I'm not aware of any way to set a base, or keep any kinds of aa profiles. I think it would be a great addition. It wouldn't change anything for already powerful fully-aa'd characters, but would help us aa-impaired folks keep up with the joneses (without undue carpal tunnel).

How cool would it be? /resetaa raid or /resetaa rootrot

[Tordail]

That is very interesting, I did not know that. I had thought you were using the term to change your specialization from say, alteration to conjuration or some such. I still wonder, though, why you would "respec" and go through spending all your AA's all over again so constantly.

[Macnair]

Because if you had, say, 300 aa, you could spend them all to help yourself solo better: maximizing dot damage and so on, spending nothing on buffs and heals.

Then, for the raid, you could regain them, and spend them all to help yourself be a better raider: mgb, buff extension, healing boosts, spending nothing on dots.

[Tordail]

Well, yes. I had just thought someone might be better served by spreading those AA's around and just working to max the AA lines.

[Vasei]

With 350 aa, it's hard to spread them far enough to get much done.

It's not as if you lose any respending them. I suppose there are less entertaining ways to spend your waiting-for-the-raid-to-start time. I've also ended up keeping some abilities that I bought on a lark and then grew to absolutely love.