The void shard system was introduced with the release of The Shadow Odyssey expansion pack in late 2008. A void shard is an item used in the form of currency or traded to certain merchants for items such as Armor, Jewelry, Weapons, Charms, Mounts and so forth. To earn these shards you need to complete Quests or kill certain mobs within TSO instances. You will typically earn between one to four shards per instance per day. There are over 20 instances from which you can earn these shards. Some are more difficult than other zones. 

The concept of using shards as a currency that is used for purchasing rewards is not completely new to Everquest; many of the recent world events like Frostfell began using a form of shards as quest rewards, which are then used as a form of currency. A similar system was used in the original Everquest expansion Lost Dungeons of Norrath. Some love it and other despise this system. This is due to the nasty fact that you will have to grid these instances over and over and over, especially if you have alts. The good thing is that shards are Heirloom so you can trade them to your alts as long as they are on the same account. It takes quite a bit of shards to get some of the better gear in this expansion. With this expansion pack more that the previous it is important to progress your gear. For example some of the higher level instances can be difficult to complete even for a fully Veeshan’s Peak geared raider. This is because Sony added Critical damage to the mobs in these instances. This means that you can be one-shooted much more regular. Once you obtain your tier two armor you begin earn gear that mitigates this Critical damage. This opens you up to get your fabled TSO armor that allows you to progress in the content which leads to better gear which in turn leads to better survivability in tougher zones.

Armor and jewelry are the main focus for most players when spending shards so let’s go over some of those concepts. The Shadow Odyssey has two main sets of armor. A Legendary set and a Fabled set. These sets are broken down into tiers between these sets. Tier 1 and 2 armor sets are Legendary while Tier 3 and 4 are Fabled. These sets are also shared between archetypes and sub-classes. If that was not confusing you also have 4 generic sets; Plate, Chain, Leather and Cloth that are used by their respectable classes. The other types of armor are the Class specific ones such as for Sorcerers or Clerics. That means the Warlocks and Wizards use the same armor and they can use the cloth vesions as well if they choose too. Now this is why you need an abundance of shards to fully gear out a character. A full set of tier one armor will cost you 44 shards. Now here is where it gets expensive. Tier 2 armor will cost you 126 Void Shards plus you Tier 1 Piece. You can get these slightly cheaper if you can find a shard armor crafter which I will go over later. Now for Tier 3 armor you will once again need to trade in your tier two shard armor along with an armor pattern and some shards. To get these patterns you need a mold which drops from boss mobs within the X2 raid zones. This will cost slightly more shards than the tier one costs. For Tier four the great news is you do not need to trade in any gear to get your armor; however you will still need a number of shards as well as plat. This works similar to past expansion packs where the boss mobs drops patterns found in the highest level raids zones of TSO. Now don’t think you are going to just skip tier 1 – 3 and hop into these zones in VP gear. Maybe avatar gear but many don’t have that. This gear should not be confused as a progression from tier three just because it is called tier 4. It’s not a direct progression from tier 3 shard armor but more of a progression from Veeshan’s Peak Raid armor from RoK. Also it’s fair to mention the new black market vendors added with Game Update 53 sell many fabled items that come from all of the TSO zones for a bargain price of 150 shards. This is a controversial topic for many hardcore and veteran players. Some feel this is another step in making EQ2 easy street. Clearly though is you have the time and many alts you can gear you characters very well with out ever raiding. However to be the best you need to raid to get the best gear in the game.

For more on the Shard System see the upcoming Show 13: The Shard System.

So you want to power level and get to 80 as fast as possible? Why? Is it because your friends are all 80? Do you want to RAID? Is this you’re second character and you don’t care to see all the content you already have done before? First off the first excuse can not be used since EverQuest II allows players of higher levels to mentor down to any character level to play with friends. The second reason is more valid but comes at a cost as you will see. The third reason is also valid since you may have explored all the content in EverQuest.

There are some consequences to leveling too fast and with EQ2 leveling from 1-70 is already very fast contrary to what some may think. One of the major draw backs to power leveling is that you will most likely lack Alternate Achievements (AA) which has become almost necessary as new expansions have come out anticipating that players will use them to make the content progression easier. Currently AA’s are not leveled as fast as you can gain adventuring levels. This may change soon according to SOE. Because of this players can be level 80 but only to find themselves with less than 100 AA out of 200 possible. AA’s can improve your survivability in a number of ways. Some improve mitigation, taunting, rescue abilities which are great for tanks. There are many important improvements to class abilities and combat arts. This ranges from improving recast times, reduce resistibility, improve debuff’s and buff’s, improve damage, Area of Effect mitigations (important in Raids) and much more. AA’s make a difference and many guilds require you to have a minimum number of them to participate in progression Raids. Somewhere around 140 – 150 AA seems to be the norm for most hard core Raids. But rest assure you need as many as you can get. AA’s are leveled via discovery experience, killing named mobs, completing quests and turning in collections. As you can see it can be much harder to power level this aspect of your character in a quick manner. Yes you can have a level 80 mentor you which improves AA experience quite a bit but this may not be practical for everyone

Another thing that will be very badly out of whack will be your skills such as, Disruption which improves direct damage for spells. Focus is used my spell casting classes to better your chance of completing spells without being interrupted. Deflection is very important to the Brawlers and is used to avoid damage. Ministration is important to Priests as it affects the effectiveness of Heals. One last example is Aggression which is a key skill for fighter classes. This is how well your taunts will affect monsters. This skill affects the chance that a taunt will be resisted. There are many more skills which all depend upon the class you are. These skills take more time to rise and some of them are vital to the class. You can have to total of 400 points at level 80 (Un-modified by equipment). The only way to raise these skills is to use them. By leveling too quickly these skills can be neglected and very low. Some times lower than 100. Think about it. If you are not using your taunts often and you just kill the mob using high DPS from a level 80 wizard then you will not raise your Aggression. The same goes if you are a Mage and never use your spells all that often because you are being power leveled you will have your spells resisted much more at level 80 if this skill is not near 400. Yes you can get your expert (formally know as Adept III) spells but this is only part of the equation that determines the resistibility of your spells. I think you get the picture.

Then there is gear. You may be prepared for this challenge once you are at 80 if you have a main character that has been doing The Shadow Odyssey Shard runs. Since you can trade or share shards between characters on the same account. But for those who do not have the luxury of shards you character will be a little gimp. To raid at the end game and survive some of the group content you really should have Legendary Gear at a minimum. You can get some of this off the broker but the better gear will require you to complete quest lines and do heroic content. The best gear which is fabled is obtained by Raiding. Again do not expect to can hop into Palace of Ferzhul, considered one of the harder zones, in Mastercrafted gear. You will get owned. You need to progress in the content once you are 80 and earn shards to buy your shard armor. This is not as important as the other items as discussed earlier but it can be a reason why some people may not ask you to join certain high level TSO content. Just because your level is 80 and you can zone in to a zone does not make you ready to survive the instance. Just keep that in mind.

Another very important thing is player skill. If you power level or level too fast how will you know your character? Do you really know how to use your entire abilities well? Do you know when to use that rescue ability? I know from my own experience with my Fury and Defiler. Both heal differently and I was very use to the Furies fast casting heals. The Defiler on the other hand have much slower healing but also uses wards instead of regenerative healing. Also the Defiler is a debuffing machine which is a new concept for a fury. Let’s say you have never played a tank class before. If you level too fast you may have issues once your 80. Tanks are expected to lead groups and raids. You need to know your class and abilities along with the zones you quest in. Some classes are not required to be overly concerned with this. Classes like Wizards and Warlocks can be more forgiving. They are important to a group but could get away with not knowing their class more than let’s say fighters and healers. But this will catch up to you as well once someone runs a parsing tool on you and find out that your dps is lacking to a fury when you should be out dps a healer on most occasions. The more you play your character in real grouping situations the better you become as a player. If you have shoot by the levels it will still take some time to be good at your class unless you are a gifted individual.

In closing I would like to say play the game however you want. I just wanted to point out some of the disadvantages of power leveling from my own experiences. I have been locking my current alt’s level while I complete all of the content in a given tier. Right now I have a 19 wizard who has gone thorough Timorous Deep, Darklight Woods, Commonlands, Greater Faydark and now finishing up Antonica questlines. This type of game play is discussed in the EQ2 Redux podcast as well as a thread in the EQ2 Forums. Currently I have 30 AA which is great for a level 19. This play style is not for everyone but if you have rushed through the content it can be fun to take your time and enjoy all of the content available. There is no pressure for me since I have a well equipped level 80 character. This just keeps the game fresh when the fast pace raiding game starts to burn you out. Look for a EQ-IQ show on Character Development in the future. I would love to hear about anyone else’s experience with their character development.

Transmuting was introduced with the Echoes of Faydwer expansion which is one of two secondary Tradeskills that anyone can learn even if you already have learned a primary Tradeskill such as alchemy or Carpentry. The other secondary tradeskill is Tinkering which I will cover in a later guide. You cannot however have both secondary tradeskills so you must choose one or the other. You can however reset your secondary skill if you find that you do not like it later. Let’s explain what Transmuting is before we discuss anything else. When you take the profession of Transmuting you receive a new skill called Transmute. This skill will allow you to break down items or loot found in the game into the four primary items. These are Mana, Infusion, Powder, and Fragments. These items along with a fuel are what you must use to create Adornments.

Adornments are items that are created only by players and are used to modify armor, jewelry, symbols and weapons. You do not have to have the transmuting skill to create adornments since all Tradeskill classes can make them. You will however need to acquire the components to craft them which are obtained via the transmuting skills or the Broker. All you need in addition to the components are Tradeskill books for you respective class called Enigmas. Each class, including transmuter and tinkerer, has recipe books that allow them to make specific adornments. These adornments will modify the item such as a sword or armor by adding stats like +2 to slashing or adding a proc that replenishes power. Some adornments add to your stats like Health, Power, Intelligence and Wisdom. Some of the modifications can be really great. Once you adorn the items you can not remove it nor will you be able to trade it any longer since it will become ORANTE. You can however replace the adornment with another one. High end adornments are very highly desired at max level. You may think that would make Transmuting sound like a very profitable secondary trade skill but it can very costly and frustrating to get to the levels where the max level adornments sell well. This will also cost you a very large fortune of time and money with little return on investment till you basically hit max transmuting skill.

There are three places where you can get started with Transmuting. You will need to find the Master Transmuter in Butcherblock Mountains docks, Kelethin, or Gnomeland Security in Steamfont. While you are there getting your transmuting started you should also buy your six Transmuting Abilities. These are used during the crafting process to improve Durability (quality) and Progress, much like tradeskilling. Unlike the primary Tradeskills which follow a level based system of 1-80, Transmuting is skill based. The max skill points you can obtain is 400 at level 80 Adventuring or Tradeskilling. The maximum points a character can have is determined by you adventuring or Tradeskill level, whichever is the largest. This is the same for all skill based attributes such as fishing, harvesting, slashing, etc… The formula is as follows: (Level * 5 = Max Skill)

First you should find your Transmute Skill Icon located in your Knowledge Book, (Press K), and place it onto your hotbar. Next you need to acquire some items to mute. The general rule of thumb is that you can only transmute items that are Treasured, Adept I, III and Master spell scrolls, Legendary Gear, Fabled Gear and Master Crafted Gear with the exception of most carpentry items. You cannot transmute items that stack, are bought from npc’s, consumable, LORE, ORANTE, NO VALUE etc… Once you find items such as Adept I spells which tend to be a very common item that drops or can be bought from the broker fairly cheaply, you will need to click on your Transmute Icon and then you will get an arrow icon which you will then need to click on the item you wish to Transmute. If your skills meet the minimum requirement to mute the item your cursor will turn light blue.

If you do not meet the requirement it will turn red and give you a tool tip explaining either the item is not transmutable or you lack the skill points. If you meet the requirements you begin to transmute the item and a progress bar will begin to animate and takes a few seconds. Once you compete the mute you will get one of the four components. This will depend on the quality of the items being muted. See the chart below. You will also have a change to gain a point in transmuting. You are at the mercy of the Random Number Generator (RNG) here. The RNG is very streaky and at times you will roll off several skill ups while other times you will never seem to get a skill increase. Transmuting items is the best way to raise your skills until 100. After 100 you will have to actually create Adornments as well as break down items to gather up enough components to create them.

It can be confusing at times to understand what level the item needs to be in order to raise your skill as a result of transmuting. I have a chart below that shows in dark blue the level of the Items being transmuted and the light blue column shows what the minimum transmuting skill level required to break the item down.

The closer an item level is the minimum level you can transmute, the higher your chance of getting a skill up. For example if your skill is 50 and you transmute an item which level is 14 you will have about a 70% chance of a skill up vs. if you were to mute a Level 13 item which will yield a lower chance. You will however always have a 25% chance to skill up with any level item you can transmute.

After your skill is 100 you will now have to start making Adornments. You will need to use the Enigma of Transmuting recipe books made for Transmuters to increase you skill. You cannot use any of the Tradeskill specific Enigma Recipe books to increase your skills. The following books are broken down into eight basic volumes and eight advanced volumes. You only need the basic volumes to raise you skill. The advanced books are use the more rare components to make fabled adornments and would be a waste of money while leveling your skill. If you wanted to raise your transmuting skill which sits at 114 you would need to make adornments from the Enigma of Transmuting Vol. 3 until your skill is 150.

There is not much else to transmuting. Keep in mind that leveling this skill can be very difficult. You cannot do it cheaply and quick. It’s either cheaply and long by farming your own treasured items from the various tiers or the costly way by buying the treasured items from the broker. This is the more costly way but if you have the plat to burn this is the fastest way to getting those high end adornments made. For more on Transmuting and Adornments check out the following links:

EQ2 Wiki Transmuting
Zam Guide to Transmuting
Adornments Refrence

 

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Show number 10 continues the series dedicated to heritage quests with the search for the infamous Manastone. This was once a very prized and overpowered item in the old Everquest days. The show talks about the lore behind the Manastone and the quest that will take you from the shores of Karana to the depths of the Ruins of Varsoon with a showdown with Lord Varsoon the Undying the great necromancer whom is in search of immortality..

Links:
Allakhazam – Walkthrough
EQ2i – Walkthrough

  EQ-IQ Guide to Stiletto's Orders (2.2 MiB, 397 hits)

Email:
EQ-IQ@EQ2-Guides.com

Taken from the EQ-IQ guide to Stilettos Order’s Intercepted

As with all Heritage Quests the goal reward is an item that was usually a item that was highly desired during the original Everquest days. This quest is no exception to this rule. The reward is the controversial Manastone. The Manastone was a rare drop from an Evil Eye mob in the Lower Guk zone. This is the same mob that also drops the Bag of Sewn Evil-Eye which is a reward for Foomby’s Stolen Goods Heritage Quest as well. The drop rate was sometimes reported to be some where around 1 in 100.

The Manastone was a much overpowered item in the game and was soon nerfed around the time the Kunark expansion pack was released. It was also removed from the loot table of the Evil Eye mob and stopped dropping altogether. Now the funny thing is that Sony did not remove the item or actually really completely nerf the Manastone itself. What they did do was prevent it from dropping as well as prevent it from being used in any new zones other than the original pre-Kunark zones. This nerf was also extended to any old world zone that was revamp as well. This means zones such as the Commonlands, Lavastorm and Desert of Ro zones will not allow the Manastone to be used.

So why was Manastone considered so overpowered? Let’s look back at the early days of Everquest when mana regeneration was very slow as compared to the way it is today. For those healers or mages that were lucky enough to own this Manastone they would never run out of mana. Forgive me if I am off a little here but from what I understand from my reading the Manastone itself would sacrifice 60% of your total heath and then take one third of that add and it to your mana pool. So try to imagine that you had 6000 Hit points. Take 60% of that to get 2400 hit points sacrificed. Then divide that by 3 to get 800 mana. Now cast a Heal over Time spell that uses 400 mana. You just got back a net of +400 Mana and full heath as a result of your Heath over Time Spell. You could then click on the Manastone again and then heal. This all adds up to some very fast regen. These are not exact numbers and are used to illustrate how powerful the Manastone was in a time where mana regen was very slow. Today the Manastone still remains in Everquest mainly as a relic of the past. At times after it ceased to drop it could be found on in the Bazaar going for as high a 1 million plat. With today’s faster mana regen and the revamping of the old world zones the Manastone is now just an old relic of a forgotten time.

For more on the Manastone see show 10 on Stilettos Order’s Intercepted.