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.