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EverQuest II News and Update Notes

The latest from Daybreak in one place: what's coming, what's running now, and what the most recent patches changed. Each item links to the full post on the official site.

Last checked October 27, 2026. For anything newer, see the official EQ2 news and update notes pages.

Happening now

• Paths of Sedition, the prelude to the expansion, started October 6, 2026. It adds six zones, eight adventure quests, eight tradeskill quests, new rewards and a new collection. The story follows mysterious artifacts and a power struggle in Freeport. How to start: talk to Salira Freecreek, a D.I.R.T.Y. Field Scout at the Crossroads in The Commonlands, tucked in a safe spot away from the guards. Her quest Down and D.I.R.T.Y. then lets you pick a path: say "investigation" for the adventure line (Artifacts or Fiction) or "prepare" for the crafting line. Each character can do only one line. Both give the same rewards and end with Operation: Faith Shaker. Find her at /waypoint -526, -44, -314. Getting there: walk out of Freeport, or Globe of Swift Travel · druid ring · Fast Travel (subscribers) to The Commonlands.
• Nights of the Dead runs October 9 to November 2, 2026 (ends 11:59 p.m. PT). New this year: the Skull Crew Catalog quest, level 135 gear chances from the Headless or Tails and Cadavers of the Corn public quests, and treat drops from Rage of Cthurath undead. See the Live Events tab for the full event. How to start: Lil' Boo sells the new house items, costumes and the recipe book in every home city's crafting area, with Haint next to him for returns: in Qeynos, the North Qeynos crafting area, Qeynos Capitol District /waypoint 337, -20, -100; in Freeport, the Coalition Crafter's Association in West Freeport, The City of Freeport /waypoint 40, -10, 87. New quest: Evie Cartahand at the D.I.R.T.Y. camp by the Skystrider Launch-Dock in The Sinking Sands /waypoint -1372, -172, -704 gives Skull Crew Catalog, which has you catalog skeleton races across Norrath for a Skeletal Chimera Plushie. Getting there: Globe of Swift Travel or druid ring to The Sinking Sands · Fast Travel (subscribers). Where the event runs: Headless or Tails in Nektulos Forest, Cadavers of the Corn in Thundering Steppes, the Haunted Mansion in Loping Plains, ghosts and calcified skeletons in Antonica and The Commonlands, and trick-or-treat stations in Qeynos and Freeport. Rewards to look for: Gruesome Spaulders of the Sinister (Headless or Tails), plus Embroidead Mistress Plushie, Active Corn Popper and Phantasm Fiend Cap (Cadavers of the Corn).

Coming next: Descent to Val'Zyroth

• Beta and pre-orders opened October 13, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. PT.
• Pre-order editions: Standard, Collector's, Premium and Family & Friends. Every edition includes beta access and the Pilbippi Mudpuppy pet. Compare what each edition includes, and its price, on the official Descent to Val'Zyroth editions page.
• Personas are the headline feature. A Persona is a second adventure class on the same character: you level it from 1, and you switch between your classes without making an alt. Daybreak's Persona Guide and FAQ covers the details:
  • Separate for each Persona: class level and experience, AA profiles, spells and class skills, hotbars and macros, equipment sets and appearance sets.
  • Shared across the character: inventory, quest journal and completed quests, languages, mounts and familiars, and your tradeskill class. Gear still has its normal class restrictions.
  • Getting one: each character can have one Persona once you own the feature. Extra slots come from Daybreak Cash or an Additional Persona Slot item. Click Add Persona on the character select screen.
  • Switching: pick the class under your name at character select, or in game open your Character window, choose the Personas tab and click Switch Persona. You can also type /camp <name> <class>, for example /camp John Shadowknight.
  • Limits: one Persona per class, Personas can't be deleted, and a character with a Persona can no longer betray to change class.
• Developer livestream: November 18, 2026. Daybreak hasn't posted the start time yet. EverQuest II streams and videos go out on the official EverQuest II YouTube channel (last year's expansion previews went up there). For the time and link, watch the official EQ2 news page, EverQuest II on X and the official EverQuest II Discord. We'll add it here as soon as it's announced.
• Level cap stays at 135, and the expansion includes a level 135 character boost token. The launch date is still to come; watch this page.

Producer's Letter, September 30, 2026

• Announced Descent to Val'Zyroth, Personas, and the Paths of Sedition prelude.
• Frostfell gifting is new this year: a Registry-based system with items like the Frostfell Gift Giving Sack and Gift Getting Stocking. A full guide is promised closer to the event.
• Extra Life: the team is fundraising with Team Darkpaw, and an Extra Life Bonus Week is coming (dates not announced).
• Upcoming events: Nights of the Dead, Heroes' Festival, Extra Life Bonus Week and Frostfell.

Latest update notes

October 13, 2026

• Avatar of Hate respawns properly again if reset during its second stage, in the main zones and Origins.
• Spider Off Dead: Jackal now credits your progress even if you've finished Operation: Faith Shaker, and level 110 adventurers can get the venom samples from spiders in Phantom Sea.
• Dispatch Conspirators for Neriak: collecting the Daenethian weapon caches now updates for the whole group.
• Conjurors no longer get spammed by Fury of the Elements messages.

September 22, 2026

• The map's green question mark button now only shows when you have a pending claim.
• NPC abilities that got saved to player spell books now remove themselves.
• The Shade of Gynok Moltor in Gerion: Realm of Conquest [Untold Heroic] has less health.

September 15, 2026

• Guild bank bags work again. Bags deposited after the September 9 patch show a gold armor icon and can only be dragged out and destroyed.
• Spent charges on charged abilities now save right away, so they don't come back after zoning.
• You can no longer take over a harvestable someone else is already gathering.

EQ2 Leveling Guide: 1 to 135

The fastest path today is dungeon farming with a mercenary up to the mid-90s, then expansion signature questlines from 95 to the cap. Levels 130 to 135 are a longer climb, so settle in and enjoy the story.

Written for EverQuest II Live servers. Checked against official notes and community sources on October 20, 2026.

Tip: click any waypoint to copy it, then paste it into your in-game chat bar and press Enter. A waypoint only works in the zone named beside it, so travel to that zone first.

How experience works now

Adventure XP

The experience that raises your adventure level. It comes from two places: killing creatures (kill or combat XP) and finishing quests (quest XP). Which one matters depends on your level (see below).

Combat XP

Adventure experience from defeating creatures. Potions and gear that boost Combat XP speed up kill experience, so they matter most while you farm agnostic dungeons or older zones.

Quest XP

Adventure experience from completing quests. In the later expansions it's almost the only experience there is.

AA XP

Experience that goes toward Alternate Advancement points, which you spend in your AA trees (AA Trees). The AA slider in your experience window sets how much of your adventure experience goes to AA instead of levels. At the level cap, all of it goes to AA.

Vitality

A rested-experience pool, like rested XP in other MMOs. While you have vitality, you earn bonus experience on top of normal gains, and the pool drains as you use it. Adventure and tradeskill vitality are tracked separately, and both refill over time, including while you're logged out.
How to check yours: look at your experience bar. A small yellow arrow on the bar marks the point where your vitality runs out; if it sits at the far right end, you have plenty. Hover your mouse over the arrow, or over the round globe at the right end of the bar, for a tooltip showing your vitality. The bar shows whichever experience you earned last; right-click it and choose Tradeskill to check your crafting vitality the same way.

The August 12, 2026 update changed the rules on every server. If you learned EQ2 leveling before then, these four points override what you remember:

• Vitality refills at 0.5% per hour, and while you have it you earn a flat 100% bonus. Log off in a safe spot and let it build between sessions.
• Combat XP, AA XP and Tradeskill XP bonuses are hard capped at 250%. Stacking a potion, vitality, an event and gear past that cap does nothing.
• Most non-consumable XP bonuses no longer stack with each other. Potions still count. Gear and passive bonuses mostly overlap now.
• The AA slider. Set it to 0% while you level for speed. You collect plenty of AA along the way and can fill the rest at the cap.

Boosts you may already own

• Rage of Cthurath, any edition, includes a Character Adventure Level 130 Boost.
• All Access members received one free Level 135 Boost per account in August 2026. It costs 0 DBC and sits in the Marketplace under the New tab, not in /claim. It does not expire. The subscriber crate also included a Magnificent Nethernaught flying mount and a level 135 gear bag for your class's armor type, so open the bag on the character who will wear it.
• Everyone got a Splendid Celebration Crate per character: 5 Portable Translocation Devices (Wizard spires), 5 Portable Circles of Growth (Druid rings) and a Mercenary Unlock Scroll. Look for it in the Marketplace New tab.
• Type /claim on an older account. Veteran rewards often hold stacks of XP potions.

Food and drink

Always keep food and drink in your equipment slots (Character window, C). Food boosts your health regeneration and drink boosts your power (mana) regeneration, so you spend less time resting between fights. Better-quality food and drink also add combat stats. Right-click each one and turn on Auto Consume, so a new one is used automatically when the last wears off.

• Match your level. Food and drink are made in tiers. Buy or craft the tier for your current level, and replace it as you level up. Since December 2025, food and drink stat bonuses stop working in expansion zones newer than the item, so old stockpiles lose their stats in current content.
• Get them from the broker or a Provisioner. Crafted food and drink are the best value and far stronger than vendor or quest food. Search the broker for your level range, or ask a Provisioner friend or guildmate (Tradeskills).
• Stock up. Carry a full stack of each so you never run dry in the middle of a dungeon.

Shortcuts for trying out a new class

Two ways to level

Up to the mid-90s you have a choice. The fast route farms agnostic dungeons with a mercenary and skips most of the old world. The Golden Path takes the classic overland zones in story order. It is slower, but you see Norrath, learn your class at a normal pace, and pick up quest gear, status and achievements along the way. Both routes join at Tranquil Sea around level 95, and every level after that comes from expansion signature lines.

Fast route

A solo route with a mercenary. The dungeon portion comes from long-standing community routes. The dungeons and their XP have stayed similar for years, but test a run before committing an XP potion to it.

Golden Path, the leisurely route

The Golden Path is the developers' recommended zone order through the original world and early expansions, built so you always have a next zone. A mercenary is still worth hiring, and you can set the AA slider higher if you want your AA to keep pace.

New character? Where to go, levels 1 to 95

Treat each level band as a guide, and move on to the next zone when its quests turn grey.

The Legend of Roger Goldie: Ol' Man Silvers' Locations

The Golden Path's signature quest series is The Legend of Roger Goldie: at level 32, speak to Ol' Man Silvers at the Highland Outposts, at the top of the ramp above the Butcherblock Mountains docks /waypoint 318, 190, 428. The six quests open at levels 32, 42, 52, 57, 65 and 65. Each time, he sends you to meet him in a new zone, and you can level anywhere you like between meetings.

How languages work

Every character speaks Common and their own race's language. Many NPCs speak only their own tongue, though. If you don't know it, their speech shows as gibberish, and they may not give you a quest, sell to you or let you hire them. You learn a language once and keep it forever. See your known languages in the Knowledge book (K).

• Player-race languages (Dwarven, Gnomish, Thexian, Stout and others) come as books called primers, which you can buy from a Linguist. Qeynos Linguists don't sell evil-race primers, and Freeport ones don't sell good-race primers. Linguists in Kelethin, Gorowyn, Neriak and New Halas sell nearly all of them.
• Creature languages (Draconic, Druzaic, Krombral, Goblish, Orcish and many more) are learned through quests or collections. The two most important are below.

The Linguists in Kelethin, Gorowyn, Neriak and New Halas sell almost every player language, good and evil.

Two language quests to do while you level

Some NPCs only speak a particular language, and later content won't let you in without it. These two are worth doing on the way up, because you'll need them further on.

How each expansion starts

Every expansion hands you its first quest in one of three ways: an NPC you go and find, mail that arrives in your in-game mailbox (check any mailbox in your city), or a quest offered when you zone in. If nothing shows up, check that you meet the level and any earlier quest it needs. A waypoint only works in the zone named beside it.

O noes! I accidentally deleted my mail!

No worries! Jerol, the Norrathian Express postman, can give you back any quest mail you've lost or deleted, including expansion starter letters, and even mail that never arrived at all.

Where he is: in The Village of Shin, the village on the Isle of Mara (players usually just call it "Mara"). Take the Globe of Swift Travel from any city's docks and choose Isle of Mara, then find Jerol near the mailbox /waypoint -89, -3, 80

How it works: click him a few times, and he hands over every letter you're owed. If he calls out "your name, come here!" as you walk up, he has mail waiting for you. Deleted his copy too? Just click him again for a fresh one.

EverQuest II screenshot, via EQ2i

Age of Discovery has no signature line. Where a source gave no coordinates, no waypoint is shown. Level range is the span the expansion's zones cover; a single number means it added content without raising the level cap. Starts at is the first quest's level, and some lines open a few levels earlier. Quest names link to their EQ2i pages.

Rage of Cthurath, 130 to 135

• Free starter kit. When you first zone into Yon Gorroth, take For the Greater Good. It hands out a full Tishan's Crate level 130 set with weapons, accessories, a mount and a familiar. The Tishan's Lockbox is at the entrance /waypoint 566, 94, -689.
• Unlock Kith early. The short side quest Double-dog Darou unlocks Kith in Darou Village /waypoint 464, 81, -573, who teleports you to the Yon Gorroth Obelisk and back. You will use it constantly from quest 4 onward.
• Level gate at quest 9. You must be level 132 to enter the Gerion, Hold of D'Lere hub zone (the [Signature] instance from quest 1 has no gate). Bank levels in the overland zones before you get there.
• After 135, the daily signature mission Rune a God Thing unlocks from Lady Najena. By then she has moved to Gerion, Hold of D'Lere, not Antonica.

Getting around as a new player

1. Press M for the map. Travel globes, spires and druid rings are marked on it, so you can see the nearest one.
2. Head to the docks for the Globe of Swift Travel. It's the main long-distance hop, and most starting cities have one.
3. Look for a spire or druid ring in outdoor zones. Between globes, spires and rings you can cross the world in two or three hops.
4. Put Call to Home on a hotbar. When you're done somewhere, it takes you back to your city, where the Globe of Swift Travel waits on the docks.
5. Join a guild with a hall. A good guild hall has a Globe of Swift Travel, a spire and a druid portal side by side, and becomes your travel hub (see Guilds).

The ways to travel

Velious: the Globe of Swift Travel goes straight to The Great Divide and Cobalt Scar. For Vesspyr Isles, use any druid ring or the Dragon Ring in The Great Divide, and bring a flying mount to cross between its islands. Obol Plains isn't on the Globe of Swift Travel, so use Fast Travel, a wizard spire or a druid ring.

Fast Travel for subscribers, and the pon macro

Fast Travel lets All Access members jump to any spire, druid ring, travel globe or dock in the game for free, from anywhere you can open your map. There's no cooldown, and using it doesn't start the timer on Call to Home. It isn't available on Time-Locked Expansion servers.

1. Open your map with M.
2. Click the Fast Travel icon at the top left of the map.
3. Pick a region, click the travel point you want, and confirm. You zone straight there.

The pon macro. Most players skip the map and put Fast Travel on a hotbar button with this command:

/smp pon pon_teleport

1. Right-click an empty hotbar slot and choose Create Macro.
2. Paste /smp pon pon_teleport into the first line, give it a name and pick an icon.
3. Click the button any time to open the Fast Travel map.

The command opens the Fast Travel map; it doesn't take a destination. Destinations include Tranquil Sea, and newer areas such as Splendor Sky Aerie appear once you meet their requirements.

Class ports and other shortcuts

• Druids (Furies and Wardens) can open a portal to any druid ring for the whole group with Circle of Growth, sold by Portals Trainers, such as Delilah Meadowglow by the Temple of Life steps in Qeynos Capitol District /waypoint 507, -31, -240 or Claudette Woodbridge in Freeport's Temple of War /waypoint -76, -9, -138.
• Wizards and Warlocks can open a portal to any wizard spire for everyone nearby with Translocate (level 25, sold by teleport trainers in your city's mage community, such as Tabatha Keltor in Qeynos's Concordium Tower, blue portal /waypoint 716, 33, 147, or Jantus Ezrek in Freeport's Academy of Arcane Science /waypoint 0, -7, -131). Ask one in your guild before a long trip.
• Call of the Veteran, a veteran reward from /claim, teleports you to a group member, or summons one to you. It has a 1-hour recast and can't be used in combat.
• Dhalgar's Last Call teleports you to a tavern of your choice, a second recall point on top of Call to Home. It has a 10-second cast and a 1-hour recast, and comes from the Banners of Thalumbra collection (finish the 13 banner collections from the Terrors of Thalumbra overland zones). To choose your tavern, talk to a bartender and pick the second option.
• The Stein of the Alebrewer works the same way. Its recipe comes in the Antiquities Crafting Crate, a reward from the Renewal of Ro D.I.R.T.Y. Jobs dailies (see Must Haves, Bar calls). Crafters make it, so you can also buy one on the broker. With both, you can bind to two different bartenders.
• Guild halls bundle a travel globe, spires, druid portals and portals to members' houses in one room (see Guilds).
• Mounts make the walking faster, and later ones leap, glide and fly (see Mounts).

EQ2 Races and Classes Guide

EverQuest II has 22 playable races and 26 classes. Your race sets your look and a few small perks. Your class decides how you play. Classes are grouped into four archetypes: Fighters tank, Priests heal, Mages cast spells, and Scouts deal melee or ranged damage and support the group. Every class can solo with a mercenary (Mercenaries), so pick the one that sounds fun to play.

The 22 races

Your race sets your look, your starting language and two kinds of perks:

• Innate abilities come automatically at level 1: a harvesting or crafting bonus for some races, a movement perk, a vision type and one signature ability. They're listed below.
• Racial traditions are passive bonuses you pick yourself, one every 10 levels, in the Character Development section of your AA window (L). Choices include stats, combat skills, food and potion duration, and crafting bonuses such as +5 to one tradeskill. An Advancement Counsel NPC can reset them: Wynia Vethe in Qeynos's Concordium Tower, through the red portal /waypoint 706, 42, 91, or Nexa L'Dur in the basement of Freeport's Academy of Arcane Science /waypoint 0, -42, -142. Gorowyn, Kelethin, Neriak and New Halas have one too.

Racial perks are small next to your class, gear and mercenary, so choose the race you like the look and story of.

• Harvesters: Wood Elf, Half Elf, Human and Sarnak harvest plants and wood faster. Dwarves and Ogres mine faster. Gnomes are the natural tinkerers.
• Getting around: Fae, Arasai and Aerakyn glide and never take falling damage. Erudites, Frogloks and Iksar breathe underwater. Kerra, Sarnak, Fae and Arasai have speed boosts they can use in combat.
• Newer races: the Vah Shir arrived with Reign of Shadows. Freeblood and Aerakyn are premium races (see Alignment, races and premium classes, below).

All 26 classes

Alignment, races and premium classes

• Alignment: most classes are neutral and can be good or evil. A few are tied to one side, such as the Paladin (good) and the Shadowknight (evil), and the character creator only offers them to matching characters. Some race and class combinations aren't allowed.
• Premium classes and races: the Beastlord (first released with Age of Discovery) and the Channeler (first released with Tears of Veeshan), plus the Freeblood and Aerakyn races, are unlocked through the Marketplace.
• Coming soon, Personas: the Descent to Val'Zyroth expansion adds Personas, which let your existing character level a completely different class from scratch, without making a new character.

Choosing your first class

• Easiest to solo: pet classes (Necromancer, Conjuror) and self-healing tanks (Shadowknight, Paladin). They survive mistakes, which makes them friendly for learning the game.
• Always wanted in groups: tanks and healers. If you enjoy keeping others alive or leading the fight, you'll never wait long for a group.
• Harder to learn: bards and enchanters have many buffs and utility spells to manage. They're very rewarding, but best as a second class.
• Try before you commit: a new character can reach about level 20 in one session by exploring the Plane of Magic (see Shortcuts in Leveling).

EQ2 Mercenary Guide

A mercenary is an NPC that takes a group slot and fights for you for a running fee. Since a 2013 update, it doesn't take any of your experience, so you keep every bit of XP you earn. Even a cheap city merc carries a new character through the early levels. At the cap, a trained and geared merc matters more than its rarity, and the mercs you train power up your own battalion buff.

You can hire one in any of the six starting cities. Each city has mercenaries waiting in or beside its tavern:

• Qeynos: Fish's Alehouse and Inn, Qeynos Harbor /waypoint 804, -24, 62
• Freeport: Seafarer's Roost, The City of Freeport /waypoint -221, -55, -1
• Kelethin: Jysolin's Pub, Greater Faydark /waypoint 197, 108, 349
• New Halas: Coldwind Hall, Frostfang Sea /waypoint 93, 154, -172
• Gorowyn: the city complex, Timorous Deep /waypoint 2623, 66, 1167
• Neriak: near the Darklight Wood entrance /waypoint -9, 18, -35

For every mercenary in the game, with class, rarity and where to find each one, see the EQ2 Wiki Mercenaries list.

What you need

• To hire mercs, you need the Mercenaries feature. It came with Age of Discovery and is included in later expansion bundles.
• To train them and equip stat gear, you need Kunark Ascending. Training caps by expansion: rank 5 with Kunark Ascending, rank 10 with Planes of Prophecy, rank 20 with Chaos Descending.
• Hire anywhere. Since June 2026, signing a new mercenary contract offers to hire that merc anywhere right away. Older mercs that show as Restricted can still be unlocked from the Mercenary tab of your Character window (C). The free Mercenary Unlock Scroll from the 2026 Splendid Celebration Crate covers one.

Commands

/merc attack /merc backoff /merc ranged /merc melee /merc preserve_self /merc preserve_master /merc suspend /merc resume /togglemerc /cl_ignore_merc_chatter true

Suspending has a 1-minute timer before you can resume. A merc that dies becomes suspended, and each resume charges upkeep again.

Rarity: what it changes

A merc copies a share of your stats based on its rarity. Rarity also sets how much it adds to the battalion buff and to Overseer missions.

Tip: the Overseer quest window shows the success chance before and after you assign a mercenary, so you can see its bonus at a glance.

Training

Be sure to train your merc! Training is passive and counts down in real days, even while you're offline. Summon the merc, open its window (the blue square next to its name), start training, and come back when the timer ends. Rank 1→2 takes 3 days, and each rank after that adds 2 more days: rank 10→11 is 21 days, rank 19→20 is 39 days. Rank 1 to 20 is 399 days in total for one merc.

• Speed it up with training reductions. Overseer missions drop 10-, 15- and 20-day reductions, and some tradeskill mission crates give 30-day ones. They apply to whichever merc is training, so use them on long ranks, not short ones.
• One merc trains at a time per character. Always keep something training.

The Mercenary Battalion buff

Your battalion buff is a permanent buff for you. It comes from the most recent merc you hired that can be hired anywhere and has reached at least rank 2, whether that merc is out or suspended. Since Rage of Cthurath it grants Crit Bonus.

• What makes it stronger, most important first: that merc's rank (a rank 20 merc gives more than twice a rank 5 one), its season (newer seasons give more), then its rarity (a Celestial is about 23% stronger than a Treasured at the same rank). So hire, and keep out, the best-trained merc from the newest season you have.
• Contribution adds a little on top. Every merc you've unlocked adds contribution points for each 5 ranks it has trained, using the table above, up to 100 points. Rarer mercs earn more: a Treasured at rank 20, such as Hangar Voidstomper (already rank 20 at hire), gives 4 points, while a Celestial gives 4 at rank 5 and 16 at rank 20. A full 100 adds up to about 6% to the buff.
• Cheap contribution: because points come per 5 ranks, training several mercs to rank 5 or 10 collects points quickly before you push one to 20.
• It works in older content too. The buff is active everywhere, including while you level through older zones. If you're taking on older content and want it off, class trainers sell an ability that temporarily switches off permanent effects like the battalion buff.

Gear slots unlock with rank

Rank 1 opens head, chest and 2 accolades. Forearms open at 2, shoulders at 4, hands at 6, legs at 8, feet at 10. Odd ranks 3 through 9 each add an accolade, rank 10 adds one, and every second rank from 12 to 20 adds another. Mercs wear regular armor and unlimited relics as well as MERC-ONLY items.

What gearing a merc does: it makes the merc stronger, not you. A merc copies a share of your stats based on its rarity (40% for Treasured up to 80% for Celestial), and its own gear adds on top of that, so a geared merc heals, hits or tanks harder. It doesn't change your character's stats, and it doesn't add battalion points; only rarity and training rank do that.

• Armor: since Kunark Ascending, merc armor carries real stats, not just looks. Mercs can wear any armor type you own, whatever their class.
• Relics: a merc can wear as many as you give it, where you're limited to two.
• Accolades: mercenary-only items. Crafters make them, in handcrafted and mastercrafted versions, from the level 100 Clan Bloody Tooth Mercenary Gear recipe book. It's sold by Scribbleclaw, beside Oogthor in Twark, Obulus Frontier /waypoint 77, -165, -723, for Sovereign of Rile once you have enough Bloody Tooth Clan faction (Oogthor's daily and weekly crafting quests build both).Getting to Twark: the Obulus Frontier opens for every character on your account once any one of them finishes Kunark Ascending: Beyond the Veil. Then take a wizard spire to the Crusader Cave in the Obulus Frontier, or walk in through the cave in Kylong Plains /waypoint 2325, 161, -2927 (Kylong Plains waypoint). From the Crusader Cave, head north to Twark, the goblin camp on an islet between two branches of Warslik's River /waypoint 271, -180, -658. Crafters who finish Search and Rescue get the Twark Transport Totem, which teleports you straight there.
• Rank vs rarity when you summon: rank opens the slots, so a fully trained, fully geared Treasured merc often does more than a barely trained Celestial with most slots locked. Keep the Celestial training and swap it in once its slots open, around rank 10.

Merc gear stats and levels: what they mean

Merc gear reads just like your own. Each piece has a level, and your merc is always your level, so it can wear any piece up to your level. As with your own gear, each new expansion's merc pieces are far stronger than the last. Each piece also lists stats, and those go to the merc: Stamina and health keep it alive, Potency and Crit Bonus raise its damage and healing, Multi Attack, Haste or Casting Speed make it faster, and Resolve lets it keep up in new zones.

• Resolve matters most. Mercs face the same resolve checks you do in current content (see Resolve on the Player Stats tab), so every merc has a built-in ability, Mercenary's Resolve, that raises the Resolve on its gear by 400%. A merc in old gear falls behind in new zones, and fresh gear puts it right back in the fight.
• See the climb: a crafted level 100 Bloody Tooth Battlemaster's Accolade gives 404.9 Potency, 140 Crit Bonus and 9 Resolve. The level 130 Formless Lockbox Accolade of Final Fortitude from the Rage of Cthurath Tishan's Lockbox gives over 45,000 Potency, 1,345 Crit Bonus and 600 Resolve.
• Free merc sets: recent Tishan's Lockboxes, including Rage of Cthurath's, offer a full set of merc armor alongside yours. Take it every time you start a new expansion (see the Gear tab).
• How it helps you: merc gear never changes your own stats, but a well-geared merc kills faster, heals you more and holds enemies better. That means quicker leveling, fewer deaths and harder fights you can take on with just the two of you.

Source: EQ2i's Mercenary's Resolve, Tishan's Lockbox (Yon Gorroth) and Mercenary Guide.

EQ2 Tradeskill Guide

Crafting has its own level, separate from your adventure level, with the same cap of 135. Even if you never sell a thing, the crafting questlines are worth doing. They give flying in most recent expansions, a pack pony that harvests for you while you're logged off, a 1.5-second harvest buff, mounts, mercenaries, familiars and crafting gear. This tab lists the quests that give each reward, so you know which ones not to miss. Each character picks one primary crafting class: Armorer, Weaponsmith, Tailor, Jeweler, Sage, Alchemist, Carpenter, Provisioner or Woodworker. Alongside it, you can learn all three secondary tradeskills: Transmuting, Tinkering and Adorning.

Choosing a craft

Every crafter starts as an Artisan. You choose an archetype at level 10 and your final class at level 20, by speaking to a crafting trainer at levels 9 and 19. Each starting city has one near its crafting stations:

Picking one: the Scholar classes make ability upgrades, so they're the most useful to yourself and your alts. Carpenter suits anyone who enjoys housing. Every reward on this tab is open to every crafting class, so you can't make a wrong choice for flying or perks.

Secondary trades

These stack on top of your crafting class. Every character can Transmute, which breaks gear into components. Tinkering makes gadgets such as parachutes, water-breathing devices and mechanical pets. Adorning makes adornments from transmuted parts.

Training is easy now: you can learn Tinkering and Adorning from the trainers in any major city, including your own home city. You no longer need to hunt down a specific trainer in Butcherblock or Kelethin. The Tinkering and Adorning trainers stand in or near each city's crafting area; Qeynos and Freeport are listed in full below.

For higher-level tinkering blueprints, these merchants are still useful:

Londiar Inygad, in the crafting area of each home city, gives daily tinkering, adorning and transmuting tasks that reset every 18 hours.

Leveling route, 1 to 135

City crafting quests (tradeskill 20 to 60)

Where to start: speak with the Trades Coordinator (a "Grandmaster") at your city's crafting society. The first quest opens at tradeskill 20, and each later one opens about ten levels on (you can pick each up at 30, 40 and 50, a few levels before its journal level). Each step gives tradeskill XP, faction with that society, and a reward for your trade. Any major city's coordinator will do.

Also in Kelethin (Grandmaster Feldmanus, Tunare's Pages /waypoint 463, 91, 364) and Neriak (Grandmaster Zyrythius, Dockside Markets /waypoint -199, -4, 246). Pictures: EverQuest II screenshots, via EQ2i.

Provisioners get Provisioner Mastery volumes instead of advanced books. Full series: Craftsman timeline. For every crafting quest by level, see EQ2i's Tradeskill timeline.

Raffik's Shipwrecked! line (TS 5 to 100)

Where to start: at tradeskill level 5, open the in-game mail from Raffik to get Shipwrecked!. If you deleted it, see Jerol by the mailbox on the Isle of Mara /waypoint -89, -3, 80 (see Leveling). One quest per tier, and each gives an Artisan's Amalgamation recipe.

The Message in a Bottle: accepting the quest puts a Message in a Bottle in your bags. It's a house item: place it in your house, then click it and use its spell to be teleported to Raffik's shipwreck on the Abandoned Island. Hail Raffik next to his small boat on the west side of the island /waypoint 74, 0, 28. Keep the bottle in your house, because the next quest, Castaway (TS 10), sends you back through it. No house yet? You can click the bottle in a friend's or guildmate's house too.

EverQuest II screenshot, via EQ2i

Full series: Shipwrecked timeline.

Don't miss: the Pack Pony

The Artisan's Pack Pony harvests for you. Hail it and pick a harvest tier, and it gathers for about two hours of real time, even while you're logged off. It doesn't tell you when it's done, so check on it, and send it out again as soon as you empty its packs. It can't sell items or store anything.

You earn it through Qho Augren's A Gathering Obsession series: eight harvesting quests (one per tier), a final errand, then the quest that gives the pony, and later an upgrade. Qho lives in his pond in the Village of Shin on the Isle of Mara /waypoint -35, 11, -109. The Globe of Swift Travel at any city's docks takes you there. Your first harvest mails you a potion that points you to him. If Qho shows no quest feather for the next part, hail him again.

EverQuest II screenshot, via EQ2i

Part 1: A Gathering Obsession, Parts I to VIII and the Final Errand

Where to start: take the Globe of Swift Travel at any city's docks to the Isle of Mara and head into the Village of Shin. Qho Augren is swimming in a small pond there /waypoint -35, 11, -109. Hail him to get A Gathering Obsession. Your first harvest also mails you a potion that points you to him.

Tips: crafters can gain up to a level of tradeskill experience per quest, so if your crafting XP bar is full, craft something before you turn in the next part. From tradeskill level 20 you can buy a Return to Mara stone (about 6 gold) from Koros Splinterlimb, at the bar opposite the South Sea tents on Mara /waypoint -93, -2, 103, to teleport back after each harvesting run.

Part 2: The Return of a Gathering Obsession and the pony upgrade

Where to start: once you've finished the Final Errand and reached tradeskill 90, zone into Thurgadin (take the Globe of Swift Travel to The Great Divide, which lands at Thurgadin Harbor, then ride the elevator up). Qho's mail arrives when you zone in. Then hail Qho in his pond in the Village of Shin, Isle of Mara /waypoint -35, 11, -109, to get The Return of a Gathering Obsession.

The upgraded Fully Trained Pack Pony looks the same as the first one; the difference is that it can bring back rare harvests, and holiday harvests during events.

EverQuest II screenshot, via EQ2i

Full series: A Gathering Obsession timeline.

Later crafting lines add more to the pony: A Stitch in Time, Part III (Planes of Prophecy) adds Autonomous Harvesting (the pony grabs bonus resources from nearby nodes up to once every 90 seconds) and a Ceffyl appearance, and the Chaos Descending and Blood of Luclin finales add new appearances and let it bring back newer rares.

The Artisan Epic (tradeskill 80): master crafter cloak and Earring of the Solstice

Where to start: you need tradeskill 80 and at least -20,000 faction (Apprehensive) with Bathezid's Watch in the Fens of Nathsar. Start the faction with New Lands, New Profits from Taskmaster Greeblentus on the upper level of Teren's Grasp, Kylong Plains /waypoint 2116, 520, -912. Then take the sokokar from Kylong Plains to the Fens and climb to Bathezid's Watch. In the crafting room at the end of the hallway on the right, Supply Sergeant Anuhadux gives repeatable faction writs (+750 each) /waypoint 1175, 203, 1430, and Assistant Volwon Zhi'dok gives a daily mission (+2,000) /waypoint 1185, 204, 1427. At -20,000, hail Danelak Hosfoak /waypoint 1195, 203, 1465 to begin.

The Proof of the Pudding: the nine crafted items

Getting to Rivervale: take the Globe of Swift Travel at your city's docks to the Enchanted Lands; you arrive at the docks of the Lost Village of Bobick on the south coast. Travel east across the island to the Rivervale zone entrance /waypoint -333, 32, -278. The Enchanted Lands is a level 30 to 40 zone, so a low-level crafter should bring a friend, a mount or invisibility. In Rivervale, Neeta Cabbageleaf is in The Fools Gold inn /waypoint -61, -17, -9.

What she wants: one item made by each of the nine crafting classes, including your own. Each item uses a recipe that a crafter of that class gets from the errands step of their own Artisan Epic, so you need crafters who have reached that point. The items are Heirloom, so the other crafters make them for you through the commission system: they target you, open the recipe, and you put your materials into the commission window. The finished item goes straight to you.

Every item also needs 2 Scintillating Material and 2 Smoldering Material (Tier 8 crafted components). Your full shopping list: 18 Scintillating Material, 18 Smoldering Material, 2 Severed Cedar, 2 Rough Ruby, 2 Ebon Cluster, 1 Fused Loam, 1 Figwart Root and 1 Rhodium Cluster, plus fuel or about 5 gold per crafter to cover it.

Rewards: the Earring of the Solstice. Just having it in your bags lets you see the hidden red tradeskill "shinies" and expert collections in Faydwer, Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey zones. Click it for a one-day buff (paused in combat): +45% run speed, +20 to every crafting skill, +25 to every harvesting skill, and +1% success and critical success chance. You also get a cloak for your trade: Cloak of the Master Alchemist, Cloak of the Master Armorer, Cloak of the Master Carpenter, Cloak of the Master Jeweler, Cloak of the Master Provisioner, Cloak of the Master Sage, Cloak of the Master Tailor, Cloak of the Master Weaponsmith, Cloak of the Master Woodworker. You also keep the recipe for the final item, so you can make it for other crafters later.

Full series: Artisan Epic timeline.

Don't miss: the Gathering Goblin and the 1.5-second harvest

Summon Artisan's Gathering Goblin is a Tradeskill Prestige ability (Refining tree, after 3 ranks of Seasoned Harvesting). Prestige points come from tradeskill levels 90 to 95. You send the goblin to a tier for at least two hours and it can bring back rares. The Growf line in Obulus Frontier trades that goblin for something better.

Where to start: speak to Growf in Twark, Obulus Frontier /waypoint 78, -171, -679, to get Guardian of Growf. Good news if you've already finished the Visions of Vetrovia tradeskill signature line: you can go straight to Growf and skip the rest of the Kunark Ascending crafting line. Otherwise, work through that line as far as Search and Rescue, which leads you to him. You'll need to speak Goblish; the goblin territory markers around Twark teach it.

Before you take Tree of Growf: that quest trades your Gathering Goblin for the Gardening Goblin, so take it only if you want the swap. It isn't needed for the crafting Epic 2.0.

Getting to Obulus Frontier: access is account-wide. Once any character on your account finishes Kunark Ascending: Beyond the Veil, all your characters can go. Then take a wizard spire to the Crusader Cave, or walk in through the caves from Kylong Plains /waypoint 2325, 161, -2927 or Jarsath Wastes /waypoint -1259, -12, -708. The Twark Transport Totem from Search and Rescue teleports you straight to Twark.

EverQuest II screenshot, via EQ2i

Full series: Kunark Ascending crafting timeline.

Tradeskill Prestige: Mass Production and stations

• Mass Production lets you craft 5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 of an item at once. It's the end ability of a Prestige tree and takes 15 points in that tree. It's the biggest time-saver in crafting.
• Summon Crafting Stations puts down stations for 10 minutes anywhere. Its recast drops from 12 hours to instant with ranks.
• Other Prestige trees add Salvage, Refining and Experimentation bonuses.

Expansion crafting lines: what each one gives

Rewards in bold are the ones people most regret missing.

Rage of Cthurath: Destination Unknown

Needs: tradeskill 130 and Rage of Cthurath. Start: speak to Flamebearer Denat beside the violent rift in Antonica /waypoint -2081, 4, 153. Quest: Destination Unknown: Stabilization.

Full series: Rage of Cthurath crafting timeline.

Crafting gear, expansion by expansion

Almost every expansion adds crafting gear through quest rewards, faction merchants and crafted pieces, so this isn't a full list. Instead, each row tells you the standout gear, where to go and who to see, and links to that expansion's crafting timeline on EQ2i, which lists every reward along the way.

Want every piece? EQ2i's Artisan Equipment category gathers every item a crafter can wear, and the Comprehensive Tradeskill Equipment List sorts the older pieces by trade. For harvesting gear, see Maximize your harvests below.

Apprentices and researchers

• Apprentices research new recipes for you over time. Hire them in Qeynos on the first floor of the Ironforge Exchange /waypoint 340, 0, -95, or in West Freeport outside the Coalition of Tradesfolke /waypoint 49, -18, 87. Coach yours once every 18 hours to cut 4 hours from its research.
• Public researchers are shared by everyone on the server. You'll find them in the Anchorage (Chaos Descending) and in the Renewal of Ro, Ballads of Zimara and Rage of Cthurath hubs.
• House crafting stations include the Renewal of Ro desert stations, Tock's Tinkered Tinkerstation (from Mischief Managed) and the Forge of Brell (Terrors of Thalumbra collection).

Harvesting and storage

• Get the 1.5-second harvest buff from the Growf line above. It's the biggest harvesting upgrade in the game.
• Keep your pack pony and gathering goblin working every time you log in.
• Fuel is sold by crafting vendors. The Terrors of Thalumbra censer and the Chaos Descending Planar Adventures item can summon a fuel vendor anywhere.
• The Artisan's Harvest Stash (Planes of Prophecy) and the 36-slot Fallen Dynasty bag keep harvests out of your main bags. Guilds can also buy a Harvest Supply Depot that holds 1,000 stacks.

Maximize your harvests: rare and bountiful

Two harvesting stats decide how much you bring home. Rare harvest is your chance to pull a rare from a node. Bountiful harvest is your chance to get extra items from each pull. Both come from AA, gear, mount gear, familiars and potions, and they add together. Aim for over 100% rare, and 100% bountiful is the cap.

From the harvesting tab of Fizz's Rage of Cthurath spreadsheet.

The best gear: Buried Takish'Hiz contested

Most of the top harvesting gear (the Sparking Innovative set) is sold by Milicent Boomfligger in the Artisan's Ancilla, Buried Takish'Hiz: Empire of Antiquity (Contested) /waypoint 120, 31, 13, once you've done Gnorbert's quests in the same room. Finish its questline, then do the daily for currency: 3 per daily, or 6 for members. Each piece costs 25. It's worth farming this set before chasing the other options below.

Rare harvest chance

Mount gear

Most saddles and hackamores need a pattern drop, then crafting, and some need a one-use recipe book. The Formless saddle is best for bountiful and the Vacrul saddle for rare.

Familiars and mounts with rare harvest

Bountiful harvest chance

Harvesting speed

• Finish the Kunark Ascending Growf quests (see the Gathering Goblin above). With them, your gathering goblin ability becomes a buff that sets your base harvest time to 1.5 seconds, and with 100% casting speed from the items below it drops to 0.75 seconds per node.
• Gi of the Ashen Artisan, the Compact Sumac Harvesting Kit and the Overclocked Automated Combine Harvester each cut 0.5 seconds.

Honorable mention: the Sparking Innovative Gloves from the same contested merchant give +20 max crafting without the AA. Not a harvesting item, but handy for crafters.

EQ2 Overseer Guide

The Overseer is a side system where you send agents on timed quests and collect rewards when they return. It takes a few minutes a day, and it's the main source of training-time reductions for mercenaries, mounts and spell research, plus experience for familiars. If you only spend those minutes on one daily system, make it this one. To open it, choose Overseer from the EQ2 button menu or type /toggleoverseer. You can drag its icon to a hotbar.

Getting started

• Access: All Access members get the full system. Owners of Blood of Luclin keep limited access without a membership.
• Starter agents: type /claim and take An Overseer's First Agents. Administrator Agent Stanley Parnem is still worth visiting for older seasons' quests (see Seasons below). Find him on the Freeport docks across from the broker /waypoint -247, -56, 62, or up on the scaffolding in the Qeynos Province District shipyard /waypoint 973, -21, 91.
• Skip ahead: once you finish Traveler's Holidays - More than Beer? from the Days of Summer questline, Pas Yu sells a boost straight to Season 3 (Overseer level 21). He's on the spire island in The Sundered Frontier /waypoint 2297, -199, 2506; take a wizard spire there.

How quests work

• Daily limit: members can start 10 regular quests a day, and Blood of Luclin owners without a membership get 3. Cancelling a quest still uses the slot.
• Charged and event quests don't count toward the 10. You can hold up to 10 charged quests at a time.
• Every finished quest pays out. On top of that, a quest has a bonus chance for an extra reward crate and a mishap chance. A mishap gives nothing and puts the agents on a long cooldown or sends them on a rescue quest. Longer quests carry higher odds of both.
• Quests are account-wide. You can start them on any character, but you must finish each one on the character that started it.

Agents and traits

Agents come in Treasured, Legendary, Fabled and Celestial rarities. Treasured agents come from live events, and higher rarities drop from Overseer reward crates. Agents of Legendary rarity and above have traits. When a quest lists traits, green ones raise your bonus chance and red ones raise your mishap chance, so pick agents with green matches and no red ones.

Add a mercenary and a familiar. Assigning a mercenary you've unlocked to hire anywhere raises the bonus chance, and assigning a familiar lowers the mishap chance. Higher rarities help more. Both stay usable for everything else while they're assigned.

Consuming duplicate agents

Once you have an agent, extra copies of it aren't wasted. You can consume agents you've already received, which turns the duplicates into Overseer experience. Overseer levels move you into later seasons, which bring better quests and rewards, so this is the main use for the duplicates that pile up from reward crates and events.

• Keep one of each for your roster. Consume only spares.
• Past-season agent packs from the Marketplace work the same way. Daybreak's own description says they're for gaining Overseer experience, potions and achievements.

Seasons

Each Overseer season covers 10 Overseer levels, and a new one usually arrives with the spring game update. The current season is Season 8, “Destiny of Velious”, which launched March 24, 2026 with 33 quests and 22 agents. Your manifest shows permanent quests from your current season only. Stanley Parnem gives older seasons' permanent quests as free charged quests.

Live events add their own Overseer questlines and agents, for example Nights of the Dead and Heroes' Festival, plus annual lines for Erollisi Day and Brew Day.

The daily Heritage Hunt

! Daily must-do Heritage Hunt [Daily] is an Overseer quest you can run once a day, and its reward crate is one of the best daily returns in the game. Each run gives a Heritage Crate with heritage rewards, including a good chunk of status. Daybreak swaps in a new crate every few months. Since July 14, 2026 it has been the Zon Zobboz Heritage Crate, which replaced the Flamebearer Heritage Crate.

Where to get it: if the quest isn't already in your Overseer quest list or your inventory, get it from Arabella F'arquharson, the Heritage Merchant. She has a version in each city:

• Freeport (The City of Freeport): /waypoint -423, -57, -12
• Qeynos (Qeynos Harbor): she's in the hidden Dark Market, an underwater room in the harbor. Get into the water beside the harbor statue and swim under it through the tunnel. The market is around /waypoint 902, -31, 44.

Requirements: a level 120 adventurer to buy it, and Overseer level 10 on your account. It takes 2 agents and runs for 24 hours. Since June 2026, each finished run drops a fresh Heritage Hunt starter into your Overseer Stash (or your bags); examine it to queue up tomorrow's run. Once you qualify, run it every day before your other Overseer quests.

Rewards to target

• Training reductions for mercenaries, mounts and familiars. Save the long ones for late training ranks (Mercenaries).
  Which quests give them?

  No single quest is guaranteed to. They come from the Overseer Bonus Reward Crate, the extra crate a quest drops on a bonus (critical) success, and only quests of Legendary rarity or higher have them in that crate. The current-season Legendary crate can hold:

  • Overseer's Mercenary Training Reduction [10 Day] and Overseer's Mercenary Training Reduction [15 Day]
  • Overseer's Mount Training Reduction [10 Day], [15 Day] and [20 Day]
  • Overseer's Familiar Experience [25,000] and Overseer's Familiar Experience [50,000], for familiars

  To get more of them, run Legendary and higher quests and raise their bonus chance with green traits and an assigned mercenary. Source: EQ2i, Overseer Bonus Reward Crate.

• Research time reducers for spell upgrades and companion research.
• Crafting materials, gear, collectibles and Overseer achievements, which are account-wide. A separate Overseer bag holds Overseer rewards only.

EQ2 Mount Guide

A mount is more than a ride in EQ2. It carries its own stat buff, it levels up through training, and each level opens slots for mount gear. A trained, geared mount is one of the cheapest power upgrades you can make.

How mount power works

• The mount itself gives a stat buff. Expansion mounts come in rarities, like mercenaries and familiars. For example, the Rage of Cthurath Collector's mount is Legendary and the Premium one is Celestial.
• Training raises the mount's level. The first level takes about a day and a half, and later ones take longer. Training keeps running while you're offline. Keep it in your Mount tab while it trains.
• Gear slots unlock as the mount levels: Saddle, Hackamore, Reins, Breeching, Stirrup and Shoes each take one item, and Barding can hold several. Gear adds stats such as health, crit bonus or status gain.
• Summon it at its intended level. Summoning a mount below its intended level reduces the bonuses you get from it.

Free and earned mounts

• Your first mounts, while leveling: at level 30 in Butcherblock Mountains, Leaping to Conclusions from Saldas Rubbleground in the Highland Outposts /waypoint 327, 194, 554 gives the Scaled Mountain Saliraptor, a leaping mount. Crafters can earn the Horned Mountain Saliraptor from Ellerith Groundspark nearby /waypoint 332, 194, 551, starting with Dirt Digging. Take the Globe of Swift Travel to Butcherblock Mountains, then follow the waypoints to the Highland Outposts.
• For the Greater Good, the Yon Gorroth zone-in quest, includes a mount in its Tishan's Crate kit.
• Mount researchers turn time, platinum and status into a mount. The Rage of Cthurath researcher, Moun'sit, stands to the right of the entrance in The Unknown /waypoint -903, -50, 1045 and offers the Nethernaught line, from the Treasured Timid Nethernaught (3 days) up to Qaysinnth, Lord of the Unknown. Your first research of a companion or mount unlocks it account-wide, so your other characters can then buy it at a discount from that expansion's status merchant. Check the status merchant first on alts. To reach The Unknown, take the Globe of Swift Travel to Antonica, enter Lady Najena's rift in the Gnollslayer Highlands, Antonica, /waypoint -2067, 0, 118 to Yon Gorroth, then use one of the teleport obelisks found in every Rage of Cthurath zone. Only one research per account can run at a time.
• The 2026 Subscriber Crate gave All Access members a Magnificent Nethernaught. Extra crates are on sale until November 9, 2026.
• Descent to Val'Zyroth adds a scavenger hunt for a new Epic mount.

How to train your mount, step by step

1. Open your Character window (press C) and select the Mount tab.
2. Choose the mount to train and place it in the training slot on that tab. Since August 2026 the mount doesn't need to be summoned.
3. Press Start Training, near the bottom of the window. A timer shows how long the level will take. The first level takes about a day and a half, and each level after that takes longer.
4. Leave it alone. Training runs while you play other content or are logged out. Keep the mount in the Mount tab until training finishes.
5. Start the next level when the timer ends. Training doesn't continue on its own, so check back regularly. It's a good habit alongside your Overseer quests.
6. Gear up as slots open. Each new level can unlock a mount gear slot (see below).

Speeding it up: training-reduction potions cut time off the current level. They come from Overseer quests (for example the 20-day Overseer's Mount Training Reduction) and events. You can also pay Daybreak Cash to finish a level instantly. Save potions and cash for the long late levels, where they save the most time.

Tip for new players: train the mount you'll actually ride, ideally the stat mount from your expansion or the Tishan's Crate kit. Training a cosmetic mount adds no power.

Getting mount gear

Most mount gear is crafted. For Rage of Cthurath, recipe vendors sell the Handcrafted Rage Mount Equipment book once you finish the crafting quest Destination Unknown: Gone Gorroth. Untold Heroic bosses past stage 20 can also drop mount gear. If you don't craft, buy pieces on the broker, which is usually cheaper than the store for this.

Flying in Rage of Cthurath

EQ2 Familiar Guide

A familiar is a small companion that follows you and grants stat buffs, sometimes with a triggered or passive effect on top. Unlike a cosmetic pet, a familiar's stats grow as it levels, from 1 to 10.

Rarity and leveling

Familiars come in four rarities, and higher rarities need far more experience to reach level 10. Each level raises the familiar's stat buffs by a percentage. Triggered and passive effects stay the same at every level. At level 10 a familiar can take an infusion, an extra ability item.

Three ways to level a familiar

• Feed it other familiars. Consume spare familiars from your bags (not from your collection) into the one you want to level. Familiars from /claim, quests, events and promotions can't be consumed, but the ones from Familiars Wild cages can. Treasured familiars barely count, so a few Fabled ones go much further.
• Training potions and tonics raise the summoned familiar one level instantly. Some stop working past a set level. They come from events (for example Yun Zi during Days of Summer), promotions and expansion editions such as the Voidskrit Familiar Training Potion in the Rage of Cthurath Collector's edition.
• Overseer experience items: Overseer quests reward Overseer's Familiar Experience [25,000] and [50,000], which you use on your familiar (see Overseer).

Where to get familiars

• Expansion editions: some familiars come with an expansion purchase, depending on which edition you buy. The higher tiers, such as the Collector's and Family & Friends editions, usually add a familiar or familiar items that the standard edition doesn't, so compare the edition contents on the expansion's page before you buy. If you already own them, /claim them from the Claim window.
• For the Greater Good, offered when you first zone into Yon Gorroth, includes a familiar in its Tishan's Crate kit. Yon Gorroth is reached through the rift in Gnollslayer Highlands, Antonica /waypoint -2067, 0, 118.
• Fam'lira, the Companion Researcher beside Moun'sit in The Unknown /waypoint -902, -50, 1048, researches the Rage of Cthurath familiars for time, platinum and status: from the Treasured Digestive Sucker (4 days) to the Celestial Umbracore Deliverer (14 days). You pick exactly which familiar you get. To reach The Unknown, take the Globe of Swift Travel to Antonica, enter Lady Najena's rift in the Gnollslayer Highlands, Antonica, /waypoint -2067, 0, 118 to Yon Gorroth, then use one of the teleport obelisks found in every Rage of Cthurath zone.
• Alts save big: Your first research of a companion or mount unlocks it account-wide, so your other characters can then buy it at a discount from that expansion's status merchant. Check the status merchant first on alts.
• Coming with Descent to Val'Zyroth (pre-orders opened October 13, 2026): the Moderate Mudderite familiar is planned as the signature line reward.

EQ2 Deity Guide

You can start your deity quests at level 20, when your god's prophet offers the first devotion quest. The prize is your deity pet: a little companion that casts a lasting buff on you, raising all five base stats (more in What the deity pet gives you, below). On Live, your choice of god no longer changes your combat power. Pick the one whose story, look and pet you like. This guide is current with Daybreak's September 9, 2025 update notes and November 20, 2024 update notes (see What changed, below).

What a deity still gives you on Live

• A deity pet that raises your base stats (see What the deity pet gives you, below).
• Altars, an accessory and a cloak, each from a specific devotion quest (see the table below), plus achievements and lore.
• Divine Spirit, the automatic passive described above, whether or not you choose a god.

How to choose one

Speak with a Deity Historian, such as Philosopher Rhimes on the Butcherblock Mountains docks /waypoint 674, 24, 585 or Philosopher Yubee outside the Research Library in Kelethin, Greater Faydark /waypoint 138, 109, 165, then find your god's prophet. The Globe of Swift Travel goes to Butcherblock Mountains, Greater Faydark, Timorous Deep, Enchanted Lands, Sinking Sands and Qeynos, which covers every prophet below. They also sell altars for your house. Each god has five devotion quests. The first three or four can be soloed, and the last usually needs a group.

Your alignment limits the choice. Anyone can follow a neutral god, while good gods are open only to good characters and evil gods only to evil ones. To change gods, click the altar next to your current god's prophet and confirm. There is no wait, but you lose all your favor with that god.

Quest names differ by god. Your god's prophet gives each one in turn once you reach its level.

The September 2025 update removed deity abilities only. Favor (your standing with your god), altars, and the blessings and miracles you buy at an altar with favor weren't part of that change.

The gods and their prophets

Flavors describe lore only. None of them changes your power on Live. Talk to a prophet and take the starter quest to become a follower; it also starts that god's devotion quests (above). Waypoints work only in the zone named beside them.

Choosing for flavor? Read each god's story in The gods of Norrath on the Lore tab.

EQ2 Player Stats Guide

Resolve decides whether you can survive a piece of content at all. Once your resolve is high enough, the other stats decide how fast you kill, heal or hold aggro. Get resolve right first.

Resolve

Every encounter has a resolve rating, and every piece of current gear has a resolve value. If your total is below the encounter's, you take more damage and deal less, and the penalty grows faster the further behind you are. Having more resolve than the encounter gives no extra benefit.

Rage of Cthurath targets: 13,020 for Heroic 1, 13,120 for Untold Heroics (plus 10 per stage), and 13,230, 13,430 and 13,640 for raid tiers 1 to 3. A June 2026 update set the Gerion: Throne of Contention raid at 13,750, so check each zone before you go in. The free Tishan's Crate kit from For the Greater Good, the quest offered when you first zone into Yon Gorroth, meets the solo requirement.

How damage is built

Potency, Crit Bonus and Fervor multiply your ability damage, and Ability Mod adds to it. They work together, so raising the one that's holding the others back usually helps most. Two limits apply on top: Crit Bonus and Fervor only count up to what your Crit Bonus Overcap and Fervor Overcap allow, and endgame mobs carry huge Combat Mitigation that suppresses your damage, so the same character hits very differently against different tiers of content.

From Practical EQ2 by Kojache (Kojaq on the EQ2 forums), the most current write-up on stats. It doesn't cover Crit Chance, Recovery, Strikethrough or Accuracy; see Stat caps below for those.

Cap values can shift with each expansion. Hover over a stat in your Character window (C) to see its current cap.

Stat priorities by role

Top raid guilds mostly share their numbers in guild forums and Discord rather than in public. The tank and healer lines reflect current player practice, with older guides filling in the lower priorities. If a top raider of your class on your server uses a different order, follow them.

Stat caps

Where each stat stops helping on Live. Stats marked Uncapped keep giving value however high they go, so they're where extra gear and adornments pay off once your capped stats are full. The exception is the auto-attack stats (DPS Mod, Weapon Damage Bonus, Multi Attack): uncapped, but they only boost auto-attack, so they're not worth stacking.

From the EQ2i mechanics page on caps, the most complete record of which mechanics are capped on Live and what older rulesets restricted. Use it as your map, and hover a stat in your Character window (C) in a current zone to see its live cap.

EQ2 AA Tree Guide

Alternate Advancement points let you customize your class beyond its level. You can earn up to 350, and you spend them across several trees in the AA window. AA abilities keep scaling with your level, so a well-spent tree matters more at the cap than at any other time.

The trees

No single tree can take more than 100 points. Character Development traits are a separate set of tabs, chosen at set levels.

How each tree unlocks

Each tree came with an expansion, and most open up as you spend points rather than at a set level. If a tree or its points look locked, check that your account owns the expansion it came with.

The 350 AA total was built up one expansion at a time: Kingdom of Sky allowed 50 points, Echoes of Faydwer 100, The Shadow Odyssey 200, Sentinel's Fate 250, Destiny of Velious 300 and Tears of Veeshan 350.

The expansion order and point totals come from EQ2i's AA page, which records the order trees open on Time-Locked Expansion servers. Your AA window in game always shows your current totals.

Earning AA

• The AA slider splits your adventure experience between levels and AA. All Access members can move it. Free players are fixed at 50%. At the level cap, all experience goes to AA.
• While leveling, keep the slider at 0% for speed (Leveling). You still collect AA from quests and discoveries.
• At 135, repeatable quests and the daily signature mission fill AA quickly. The Experience and Vitality Potion boosts AA XP by 100%, inside the 250% cap.

Profiles and respecs

• You can save 3 custom builds, alongside pre-made solo, group and PvP templates. Swap between them out of combat. Swapping removes your buffs and pets, so rebuff afterward.
• To change points, enter Build mode, reset or remove points, then press Commit.
• Keep one build for solo play and one for groups or raids. Many classes trade defense for damage or utility between them.

Planning tools

• EQ2Sage AA planner covers Class, Subclass, Shadows, Heroic, Prestige and Dragon.
• Beetny AA calculator is an older planner many players still use.
• For class-by-class templates, ask your class community. The best builds change with each expansion.

Ascension classes

Ascension is a second progression track added in Kunark Ascending. Every adventurer can take one of four Ascension classes, each turning its spells into a damage type: Elementalist (cold), Etherealist (magic), Geomancer (crushing) or Thaumaturgist (disease). Ascension has its own level, up to 25, and you can unlock it from level 100.

• Pick or switch your class at an Ascension Trainer. One usually stands near each expansion's Tishan's Lockbox. A handy one is Keyarel Elamyar in Myrist, the Great Library /waypoint 226, -5, 62 (reach Myrist by wizard spire, the Ulteran Spire, or a guild hall portal). Switching is free, and each class keeps its own progress.
• Jump to level 20 fast: once you've done Yun Zi's quests through Days of Summer: 2020, Pas Yu in The Sundered Frontier /waypoint 2297, -199, 2506 gives the Ascension Mastery Primer. Use it, speak to him again for another, and repeat until all four classes reach 20. Tishan's Lockboxes also carry Ascension boosts.
• Levels 21 to 25 come from Ascension boosts in the Renewal of Ro Timeline and from research. Full details: EQ2i, Ascension.

How to earn Bonus Prestige Points

Bonus Prestige Points unlock the 20 extra points in your Prestige tree. They're worth chasing: Prestige AAs are one of the steady sources of Fervor, so a full Prestige tree adds to one of your major damage multipliers. Daybreak's own notes say three things about them:

• They're account-wide. Once any character earns a point, it unlocks for your whole account, and each character still spends its points separately. If you've played Reign of Shadows or Visions of Vetrovia content on any character, you may already have most or all of them.
• There are more sources than points. You can fill all 20 without doing every kind of content, so skip raids and heroics if you like.
• Each source is numbered, and each number only counts once. If two achievements share a number, do whichever is easier.

Sources span Reign of Shadows (RoS), Visions of Vetrovia (VoV) and Renewal of Ro (RoR). Some catch-up packs, such as the Gear Up Swag it Up crate, include a Bonus Prestige Point too.

How to check: open your AA window and go to the Prestige tree. Its point counter shows how many Prestige points you have unlocked. A character with every bonus point unlocked shows 45/45. If yours is lower, you still have bonus points to earn.

For every point and the easiest way to earn each one, see the full list below or the EQ2i Bonus Prestige Point page.

List from EQ2i, Bonus Prestige Point. Account-wide unlocks and the 20-point total are from Daybreak's Reign of Shadows patch notes (Dec 15, 2020). Their December 2021 notes made the points shareable between RoS and VoV sources, which is why some numbers appear twice. To see which ones you already have, check those achievements in your Achievements window.

EQ2 Spells and Combat Arts

Upgrading your spells is one of the biggest power gains in the game. Every spell and combat art comes in eight qualities, and each step makes it stronger. This tab explains the tiers, where each one comes from, and how research works, then links to every class's full spell list.

Spell tiers: how to upgrade your spells

Open your Knowledge book (K) to see your spells and combat arts. Hover over one, or right-click it and choose Examine, to see its tier. A new tier replaces the old one when you scribe the scroll: right-click the scroll in your bags and choose Scribe. "Spells" here also means combat arts, which upgrade the same way.

The percentages are the damage of the level 131 Necromancer spell Bloodcoil XIV at each tier, read from the Daybreak Census API. Other spells scale almost the same way: the Guardian's Provoke XIV gains +21%, +32%, +68%, +74%, +83%, +119% and +124%. The biggest single jumps are Adept to Expert and Grandmaster to Ancient.

Who crafts which spell upgrades

Example recipes from the Census API: Provoke XIV (Journeyman) takes 2 Oblivion Ore plus three common harvests. Provoke XIV (Expert) takes 2 Blighted Ore and 30 commons. Sage Expert recipes such as Bloodcoil XIV (Expert) use 2 Flowfall Vines instead. A Grandmaster recipe takes the Master scroll, 2 Flowfall Vines, 1 Verboten Veal and 1 Tiama Wood. Bring the fuel, or let the crafter supply it.

Research: free upgrades over time

• Where: your Knowledge book (K), Research tab. It opens at level 20.
• How it works: pick a spell, and it upgrades one tier when the timer ends. You research one spell at a time per character, and the timer runs in real time, even while you're offline. Higher-level spells and higher tiers take longer, up to weeks per step.
• Switching: if you change to another spell, part of the time you've already spent is credited to the next one, so switching is never a total loss.
• Speed it up with research reducers. Each one cuts the time left on the spell you're researching. Extra time beyond what's left is wasted, so use the smallest that finishes it. Where to get them:
  • Heritage Hunt [Daily] (best source): the daily Overseer quest's Zon Zobboz Heritage Crate unpacks a Zon Zobboz Heritage Consumables Crate, which can hold Cobalt Spell Research Reducer [10 Day], Cobalt Spell Research Reducer [20 Day] or Cobalt Spell Research Reducer [40 Day]. See Overseer for how to get the quest.
  • Overseer quests: Overseer's Spell Research Reducer [10 Day], Overseer's Spell Research Reducer [20 Day] and Overseer's Spell Research Reducer [40 Day] turn up in Overseer reward crates, so every Overseer quest you run is a chance at one.
  • A one-time freebie: finish the Legends of Guk collection, from the Fabled Guk solo zones (Planes of Prophecy), for one Research Reducer [Five Day] on each character.
• Best use: keep research running at all times, on a spell you use constantly and can't easily buy, since crafted Expert and broker upgrades are often quicker.

Research is the slow, free path through the lower tiers. For Grandmaster, Ancient and Celestial, the scroll cases, crafters and drops above are your fastest route.

Spell lists by class

Each link opens that class's full list of spells and combat arts on EQ2i. Every spell page shows its levels, its effects at each tier and which tiers exist.

Celestial Spell Prioritization by Class

Celestial is the highest spell quality, and upgrading every spell at once isn't realistic. Upgrade your spells to Celestial in this order, first to last, so each upgrade gives you the biggest gain for your class.

Courtesy of Fizz, from Fizz's Rage of Cthurath spreadsheet, "Which Celestial First" tab. Thank you, Fizz!

Playing a Beastlord, Bruiser, Monk, Warden or Warlock? Fizz's sheet doesn't cover these yet, so ask in your class channel or Discord, where top players are happy to share their order.

EQ2 Live Events Guide

EQ2 runs a festival almost every month, plus two small events that repeat monthly. Events are where most of the game's mounts, costumes, house items and collections come from, and some hand out gear or experience that helps your main. Most of the rewards come back every year, so you never have to grind one in a hurry.

Why do events

• Cosmetics you can't get elsewhere: mounts, costume illusions, weapon auras and appearance armor.
• Housing: event merchants sell themed house items, and most events have a crafting recipe book and a collection.
• Overseer: several events add their own Overseer quests and agents, such as Nights of the Dead's Bite Club and Heroes' Festival's Winged Troubles (Overseer).
• Power for your character: some events give adornments, gear, mercenaries, familiars or bonus experience. These are listed below.
• Achievements and titles, and plenty of the game's humor.

The yearly calendar

Every month

City Festival: the 1st to the 7th

A week-long fair hosted by a different home city each month, set up just outside the city. Festival merchants sell general goods, local specialties, food and drink, fortune telling and costume rentals. No level requirement.

• City Tokens come from City Tasks all year and from Kella Swampfoot's repeatable festival quests (she appears at whichever city's fair is running): Special Delivery, Special Order Gathering and Special Order Crafting. Spend them at the festival on house items and other rewards.
• Postage collections: each host city has its own purple shiny collection, found inside the city during its festival.
• Aether Racing: each host city has a timed race (start points in the table above). Beat the qualifying time for a title, such as Bridge Buzzer in Antonica or Snowflake Chaser in Frostfang Sea.

Moonlight Enchantments: the 20th and 21st

For two days each month (Pacific time), enchanted mushroom rings appear around Norrath. Each ring leads to one of five magical grottos: the Dryad, Fay, Brownie, Zygomyd and Naiad grottos. Travel between them by spire, druid ring and Globe of Swift Travel.

• Quests: each grotto has a once-per-cycle quest and unlimited repeatable cooking quests. The repeatables only need tradeskill level 2, so any character can do them. All of them reward Elemental Tokens.
• Rewards: spend Elemental Tokens with the grotto traders on house decor (such as the Zygomyd plushie and Crystal Mosaic Squares), temporary charm-slot mounts with 20 charges (such as the Leaf-blown Carpet and Autumnstrider Unicorn), and illusion charms such as Dryad form.
• Collections: each grotto has a purple shiny collection. You can pick up one shiny per grotto each month. Finish all five for the Shinies Beneath the Moonlight achievement.

Events that help your character

• Yun Zi's travels, open all year. Yun Zi's quest series, first released week by week as Days of Summer and renamed Panda, Panda, Panda! in 2021, can be played any time, season by season in order. Start on Spire Island in The Sundered Frontier near Pas Yu /waypoint 2297, -199, 2506. The quests in The “Travels” of Yun Zi need All Access membership but have no level limit. Each season you finish unlocks its merchant rewards for every character on your account: potency adornments, the Ascension Mastery Primer (see AA Trees), a manticore mount, a mercenary, a familiar, house items and the Mara Estate prestige house, plus the bauble that skips you to Overseer Season 3.
• Bonus experience weeks, such as Extra Life Bonus Week, raise experience gains for a few days. Save your XP potions for them, but remember the 250% cap on XP bonuses.
• Mercenaries: Tinkerfest's two clockwork mercs and Bristlebane Day's goblin merc stay hireable afterward if you finished their quest during the event.

Guides and Guide quests

Guides are volunteer players who work alongside Daybreak to bring Norrath to life. They play roleplay characters, run events and hand out quests that exist only when a Guide is present. They aren't customer support and can't fix bugs or accounts. Under the program's rules they never accept items from players, and they don't play a personal character on the server where they guide.

What Guides provide the community:

• Guide quests. These are puzzle- and roleplay-driven quests, not “kill ten rats” tasks, and some never appear in your journal. You can only get them from a Guide, so they're rare chances to earn unusual rewards.
• Live roleplay events during holidays such as Frostfell and Nights of the Dead, plus surprise appearances by Guide-played NPCs.
• Ceremonies. Guides perform in-game weddings, vow renewals, memorials and celebrations for players. You can request one.
• Guild and community visits. You can ask a Guide to visit your guild or community event.

Guide quest rewards

Highly suggested When a Guide announces a quest, it's worth joining. Guides announce their presence in chat with a verbal tag so players know a quest is on offer. Guide quests reward unique items, sometimes a large amount of AA, and some of the biggest inventory bags in the game. They're only available while the Guide is there.

Many Guide quests give small treats, but a few give rewards found nowhere else:

• The Nebulous Newsies (Altar of Malice era) is offered by a Guide in Cardin Ward, Obol Plains. It awards millions of status points and a 66-slot bag, one of the largest in the game.
• Techgnical Difficulties, in The Withered Lands, awards the Clockwork Assassin, a popular guild hall item.
• Other quests give unique-looking clothing, house items and status.

Known Guide quests include A Tinkerer's Clockwork Catalog, Adventures in Pigsitting, Axe And Ye Shall Receive, Beer Hunter, Dressed for Success, Fungoid Fascination, Hunting Contest, Lost Frostfell Gifts, Love Potion Number One, My Creepy Catalog, Scratches needs Patches, Sleeping Ugly, The Fairy Lantern, The Gnollish Menace and The Tome of Tinkering. Which ones a Guide runs varies by server and season.

EQ2 Heritage Quests Guide

Heritage quests are long, story-driven quests that reward famous items from the original EverQuest: Ghoulbane, the Bone Bladed Claymore, Greenmist, the Cloak of Flames and dozens more. They're a tour through Norrath's history, and many lead you through classic dungeons you'd otherwise skip.

Why do them

• Iconic rewards. Each quest ends with a named item from EverQuest lore. Their stats are long outclassed, but they make great appearance items and house trophies. Many have a matching house-item version.
• Titles. Completing heritage quests earns titles: Treasure Hunter at 5, Lore Seeker at 10, Relic Keeper at 20 and Artifact Raider at 30. Claim them at your home city's library or mage tower once you qualify.
• Lore, achievements and status. They carry some of the best storytelling in the game, along with achievements and status points.
• Leveling on the Golden Path. Doing them at their intended level adds experience and a sense of purpose to the slower route (Leveling).

Quest pairings

Pick up every quest in a group before you head out, then work through them together. Some groups share quest steps, so they're best done at the same time; the rest share zones. The Why column says which.

All heritage quests

Each quest name links to its EQ2i page, which has full step-by-step walkthroughs with copy-ready waypoints. For a sortable list with level filters, see EQ2Sage's heritage guide, and for the full timeline, EQ2i's Heritage Quests Timeline.

Levels, start points and waypoints come from EQ2i's Heritage Quests Timeline and each quest's page. Waypoints work inside the zone named beside them, and the Globe of Swift Travel gets you to most of these zones.

EverQuest II Achievements: Rewards Worth Chasing

Achievements track nearly everything you do in Norrath, and most of them arrive on their own as you play. A good number also hand out real rewards: spell upgrades, adornments, armor, mercenaries, mounts, flying and whole-account unlocks. Here's how to find yours, and the rewards to look forward to in the order you'll reach them.

Find your achievements in your journal

1. Open your Journal by pressing J.
2. Click the Achievements tab. It's the third tab at the top of the Journal.
3. Pick a category from the list down the left side, such as Exploration or Quests, then a subcategory, which is usually an expansion.
4. Click an achievement to see its steps and what's left to do. Completed achievements fill in on their own; there's nothing to turn in, and rewards arrive automatically.

Want to see someone else's? Inspect them, and their achievements are listed too. Your AA window (L) is a different system: that's Alternate Advancement, where you spend AA points.

The categories: General (levels, AA, mounts, languages, homes, plus the Slayer and Ascension groups), Exploration (finding points of interest, by expansion), Quests (signature, heritage, collections, Overseer and expansion quests), Triumphs (big expansion goals, such as every named or every raid boss), Dungeons, Raids, Untold Heroics, Other Hunts (overland named kills), Tradeskills, Live Events and Guild.

Status as a bonus: most expansion achievements also pay a Status Bounty of 50,000 or 250,000 status points, which add up fast for status merchants and your guild.

While you level: rewards to look forward to

Bonus Prestige points

Reign of Shadows, Visions of Vetrovia and Renewal of Ro achievements unlock up to 20 bonus Prestige AA points for your whole account. The full list, by point number with the quickest ones picked out first, is on the AA Trees tab under How to earn Bonus Prestige Points.

At max level: the big ones

Account flags: finishing an expansion's signature line, or clearing a raid tier, sets an account flag through its achievement. These flags unlock content and purchases for every character on your account, so your alts benefit right away.

Tradeskill achievements

Long-term goals

For every achievement in the game, browse the Achievements pages on EQ2i, or the categories in your own journal.

Sources: Daybreak Census, EQ2 achievement data · EQ2i, Achievements · EQ2i, Rage of Cthurath Collection Timeline · EQ2i, Triad of Elements · EQ2i, Zek, the Scourge Wastes

EQ2 Guild Guide

A guild is the single best thing a new or returning player can join. Guildmates answer questions, group with you, help you through hard content and share a guild hall full of travel shortcuts and crafting tools. Since Rage of Cthurath, you can also join a second guild, called a coalition, without leaving your own.

Finding and joining a guild

• Press U to open Guilds Looking For Members. Each listing shows the guild's play style (casual, standard or hardcore), whether it trains new players, which classes it wants, and tags such as raiding, crafting, roleplay or family friendly.
• Contact a recruiter by clicking “click here to talk with them”. It sends your name, levels, classes and race to the guild's recruiter, who replies by tell.
• Accept the invite when it pops up. Once you're in, U opens your guild roster instead, and /gu talks in guild chat.
• Pick the right fit. A friendly casual guild that trains new players is usually better for learning than a top raid guild, even if the raid guild looks impressive.

What a guild gives you

• People. Help with quests and heroics, advice on your class, and players willing to run you through content (see Shortcuts for trying out a new class on the Leveling tab).
• Guild levels and buffs. Members earn guild status through writs, quests and missions, which raises the guild's level and unlocks guild buffs and merchants. Higher-level guilds get bigger buffs, and guild levels no longer decay.
• Guild bank. Shared storage, with access set by rank.
• Guild achievements and medals, which count toward your active guild.

The guild buff

Once your guild reaches level 100, every member can learn a permanent guild buff that grows stronger as the guild levels up.

• How to get it: your guild places a Guild Buff Banner in its guild hall. Click the banner once to learn the buff. Learning it puts the guild buff's icon on your hotbar, so you can recast it from there any time. It's a self-buff that lasts until cancelled, so cast it and leave it on, and click the icon again if it drops (after dying, for example).
• Levels 301 to 350: the top tiers also need Guild Advancement Tokens. Each token you use raises your guild's level and unlocks one more buff tier for your own account, at guild levels 310, 320, 330, 340 and 350. Tokens come from Reign of Shadows and Visions of Vetrovia collections, such as Luclin Treasures, Relics of the Darkside and Sights and Sounds of Vetrovia. The unlocks are account-wide, and the full list of collections is on the Must Haves tab.

All bonuses stack, so a high-level guild gives members a real boost to stats, health and speed. That's one more reason to join an established guild.

Tiers 100 to 190 are from EQ2i, Guild Buff. Guilds can level to 350 since Reign of Shadows.

Getting to your guild hall

Just joined? Here's how to find your new home. Ask in guild chat (/gu) if you get stuck. Guildmates are usually happy to help.

1. Housing window, the way that always works. Open the EQ2 menu, choose Housing & Leaderboards, then the My Houses tab. Your guild hall is listed there. Click to travel to it.
2. Learn Call to Guild Hall. If your guild has bought the Guild Translocation Beacon (the pale statue of a figure holding up an orb, pictured), click the beacon once inside the hall. You learn Call to Guild Hall, an ability that teleports you to the hall from almost anywhere. Put it on a hotbar. Its icon looks like this:
3. Magic Door to the Guild Hall. Some members keep this door in their house, and you can buy your own (see below). It always takes you to your own guild's hall.

Leaving: click the hall's exit door, type /house and choose Exit, use one of the hall's travel portals, or use Call to Home. If the hall's weekly upkeep hasn't been paid, no one can enter until it is.

Get your own guild hall door

The Magic Door to the Guild Hall is a house item. Place it in your own house, and one click takes you to your guild's hall, any time the hall's upkeep is paid.

1. Earn 100,000 personal status by doing writs, heritage quests and other status quests, or by turning in the status ingots from your daily Overseer Heritage Hunt crate. Examine an ingot to cash it in; a single one can be worth millions of status. Have 30 gold on hand too.
2. Visit a City Merchant (below) and buy the Magic Door to the Guild Hall. You can carry only one at a time, but you can buy more for other houses.
3. Go home and place it like any other furniture. Click it to travel to your guild hall.

Every starting city has one. The door always leads to your own guild's hall, so a guildmate's door works for you too, and yours works for any visitor in your guild.

The guild hall

A guild hall is a shared home for your guild. Officers (Trustees) buy amenities for it with platinum and guild status, and the number of amenity slots grows with guild level. The amenities worth looking for:

• Travel: a Globe of Swift Travel (including one to the current expansion), druid and wizard portals, an Ulteran spire, and a portal to members' houses. A good guild hall makes it the fastest travel hub in the game.
• Call to Guild Hall: a guild beacon gives every member an ability that teleports them to the hall.
• Guild flags: the Guild Strategist, a guild hall amenity, sells rally flags for outdoor zones. A guildmate plants one, and members can teleport to it, which is how guilds gather quickly for world bosses and events.
• Crafting: crafting stations, a writ giver, a fuel merchant, and harvest depots that hold 1,000 stacks of up to 99,999 items, plus depots for food and drink, collectibles, fuel, ammo and more.

Guild halls have weekly upkeep in coin and status. If it isn't paid, members can't enter until it is, but nothing is lost.

Guild Coalitions: the alliance feature

Guild Coalitions arrived with Rage of Cthurath on December 10, 2025. A coalition is a second guild that works just like a regular one, and each character can belong to one guild plus one coalition. Groups of guilds use coalitions to raid together or share a community without anyone leaving their home guild.

• A coalition has everything a guild has: ranks and permissions, its own bank, its own hall with the same amenities, coalition mail and its own chat.
• Open the Coalitions window with /togglecoalition (you can bind it to a key). /coalition works like /guild for most commands.
• Your active guild decides which tag shows over your head and which guild gets your status, medal and achievement progress. Set it any of three ways: in your Character window's Options, then Guild; in the guild or coalition window; or with /set_active_guild "Name". You can't switch in combat or inside instances other than housing.
• Halls: you can enter either your guild hall or your coalition hall from the Housing window, whichever guild is active. To buy a coalition hall, the coalition must be your active guild.

Is your guild not a good fit? How to leave

It's normal to try a guild or two before you find your people. A quick, polite note to an officer before you go is good manners and keeps doors open.

1. Open your guild window with U, or from the EQ2 menu.
2. Find your own name in the member list and select it.
3. Click Remove, then confirm. You're out, and free to join another guild right away.

When you leave, you lose the guild's buff, hall, bank and chat. Empty anything of yours from the guild bank first.

EQ2 Must-Have Items, Spells and Upgrades

The items, spells and upgrades experienced players make sure every character has. Most are one-time pickups that pay off for the rest of the game. They run roughly from lowest level to highest, so work down the list as you level.

Most of this list comes from Fizz's Rage of Cthurath spreadsheet, Must Haves tab.

Plumes: the feather in your Event Slot

Every character has an Event Slot, the feather-shaped slot at the lower right of your Character window (C), and it's an easy one to leave empty. A plume fills it with a real stat, and it grows stronger the more people in your group or raid wear one, up to double. Most plumes can be worn from level 1.

• Easiest pick: an Inspired Critical Plume (Crit Bonus) from the broker or a crafter friend. Search the broker for "Plume". They're attunable, so they can be traded until you wear one.
• Better ones: Genuine plumes from the Summer Jubilee and Chronoportal Phenomenon merchants, unlocked by event achievements.
• Full details, including the materials to hand a crafter, are on the Gear tab under Plumes.

Base values from the Daybreak Census API. All six are Fabled, wearable from level 1 by every class, and each value grows with every groupmate or raid member wearing a plume, up to double. The Darkpaw versions are the stronger pick.

Familiars

• Run Familiars Wild every day from Steward Aelin in South Qeynos, Qeynos Capitol District /waypoint 455, -21, 174, or Steward Kres outside the Freeport Block & Tackle /waypoint -204, -57, 162. It resets every 18 hours. It's a daily quest with a chance at Legendary, Fabled or Celestial familiars (see Familiars).

  

• The Rage of Cthurath tradeskill signature familiar, Eddie the Eyeblight, is Fabled and nearly as good as a researched Celestial familiar. Leveling it costs 259k familiar experience.

Splitpaw bonus spell

Finish the A Darkened Shard quest to reach Sundered Splitpaw: Splitpaw Den, then buy the bonus spell from Gumgullet. It shares a cooldown with one of your existing spells, so check that it's worth taking for your class first. Tanks and healers benefit from it the most.

1. Start the quest in The Thundering Steppes (Globe of Swift Travel to The Thundering Steppes). Click any of the gnoll terraporters, bone structures near the gnoll camps: /waypoint 548, -1, -507, /waypoint 710, -2, -414, /waypoint 1023, -1, -247 or /waypoint 1267, -3, -208. You get a darkened azure shard. Examine it to start the quest, then examine it again and pick "Examine the shard further".
2. Click a different terraporter to enter Sundered Splitpaw: Delving into the Darkness. Kill the Tesch Val Fanatic /waypoint -126, -68, -99 for a copper key, open the chest /waypoint -116, -65, -83 (stack the crates to reach it), and take the slightly glowing shard. Examine it to fuse the two shards, then leave by the terraporter /waypoint -54, -65, -226. These three are Delving into the Darkness waypoints.
3. Enter Sundered Splitpaw. Back in The Thundering Steppes, go to the Giant's Forge /waypoint 197, 1, 1081 and enter the Splitpaw Lair entrance /waypoint 171, 5, 1053, then pick Splitpaw Den. Shortcut: once you've earned the gnolls' trust with A Darkened Shard, Part 2, your shard teleports you straight to Splitpaw Den from anywhere.
4. Find Gumgullet at the back of Splitpaw Den /waypoint -3, -77, -264 (Splitpaw Den waypoint). He sells one bonus ability per archetype: Word of Force (mages), Bounty of the Virtuous (priests), Goading Gesture (fighters) and Trick of the Hunter (scouts). Only players who have earned the Splitpaw gnolls' trust can buy them. He also replaces a lost azure shard.

The quest scales with your level up to 60.

Status

The Hackamore of Status raises the status you earn, more with each tier. The top tier gives over 110% more status. Buy one on the broker or have a crafter make it.

Bar calls

The Stein of the Alebrewer is crafted. Its recipe comes in the Antiquities Crafting Crate, a reward from the Renewal of Ro D.I.R.T.Y. Jobs dailies. Gnorbert gives them in the Artisan's Ancilla, Buried Takish'Hiz: Empire of Antiquity /waypoint 138, 31, -3, after you finish Takish Delight: Tickety BOOM. You can also buy a finished stein on the broker. It lets you bind to a bartender and call back there later. With two bar calls you can bind to two different bartenders, which gives you extra recall points on top of Call to Home (see Travel).

Harvesting and crafting tools

• Compact Sumac Harvesting Kit: harvest 0.5 seconds faster, plus 12% bountiful harvest. Where: made by Woodworkers from Woodworker Essentials Volume 89, so buy it on the broker or ask a woodworker. One click lasts 10 days and it never runs out, so set it to auto-consume.
• Overclocked Automated Combine Harvester: harvest 0.5 seconds faster and +13 to all harvesting skills. Where: made by Tinkerers (skill 500) from Deepforge Tinkering Blueprints, so buy it on the broker or ask a tinkerer. One click lasts 10 days and it never runs out.
• Portable crafting tables: a workbench, desk, cooking station and more you can set down anywhere. Where: the Summon Crafting Stations ability from the Tradeskill Prestige AA trees gives you all of them (see Tradeskill Prestige on the Tradeskills tab).

Harvesting pets

These gather for you while you play. Full walkthroughs are on the Tradeskills tab.

• Gathering Obsession (the base version): the A Gathering Obsession quest series, which you must finish before the pony. It starts with Qho Augren in the Village of Shin, Isle of Mara /waypoint -35, 11, -109 (Globe of Swift Travel to Isle of Mara).
• Pack Pony: from The Return of a Gathering Obsession.
• Upgraded Pack Pony, which brings back rares: from A Gathering Obsession: Beyond the Grave.
• Gathering Goblin: a Tradeskill Prestige ability. Then do the Growf line, starting with Guardian of Growf, to trade it for the 1.5-second harvest buff. Twark is in the Obulus Frontier: take a wizard spire to the Crusader Cave there, head north to Twark /waypoint 271, -180, -658, and speak with Growf /waypoint 78, -171, -679 to start Guardian of Growf. If you've finished the Visions of Vetrovia tradeskill signature line, you can go straight to him. The full walkthrough is on the Tradeskills tab.

Bags and storage

• 88-slot bag: the Crystal Shard Backpack. It's the reward for The Scrivener's Tale: Escargot Overclocking, the third quest in the Chaos Descending tradeskill signature line. You need Chaos Descending and a level 110 crafter. The line starts with a mail from Ghida Borrell, who is in Myrist, the Great Library (reached by wizard spire), in the Smiths' Gallery. Take the teleporter to Smiths' Gallery in the South Wing Catalog /waypoint 388, 16, 170, then find her in the gallery /waypoint 660, 412, 59. For the last quest in the line she moves to /waypoint 188, 15, -56. All three are Myrist waypoints. Do Animating the Inanimate and Crafting at a Snail's Pace first. The only cost is the harvests the quest asks for.
• Artisan's Harvest Stash. A 44-slot bag for harvests, fuels and transmuting materials that doesn't use one of your bag slots. It's the reward for A Stitch in Time Part V: Sealed with Hate, the last quest in the Planes of Prophecy tradeskill signature line, from Varig Ro in the Coliseum of Valor /waypoint -134, 0, 10, reached from Valor's Roost in the Plane of Magic once you've done Legacy of Power: Hero's Devotion. He wanders the outer walkway, so look around if he isn't right there. You need Planes of Prophecy and Parts I to IV done first.

Both are yours alone: the Crystal Shard Backpack is no-trade, and the Artisan's Harvest Stash is an ability rather than an item, so each crafter earns their own.

Notable Collections and Achievements

• Amok in the Desert (rewards the French Slobberer, a summoned pet that adds +6,538 potency and +5.7% rare harvest chance, plus Leaves of Growth): a Renewal of Ro collection, solo, from shinies.
• Fallible Prescience (adornment: +5,006 potency and +237.7 crit bonus overcap, growing stronger as you complete the Fear in Focus achievement): from the merchant at the picnic table in Sodden Archipelago (Globe of Swift Travel to Sodden Archipelago). Progress it by running the Fear of Eternity zones for currency and the achievement. Garam in Yon Gorroth /waypoint 496, 83, -648 trades the purple version for a blue level 135 one.
• Witness to Fear (adornment: +8,009 potency and +44.5 fervor overcap, growing stronger with The Eternal Raider achievement): sold by Issa Moon in Sodden Archipelago /waypoint 6, 6, 358 (Globe of Swift Travel to Sodden Archipelago) to any character on an account that has the Scars of Destruction Tier 1 raid flag. The achievement needs the Scars of Destruction raids. Trade the purple version to Garam in Yon Gorroth /waypoint 496, 83, -648 for the blue level 135 version you can slot in Rage of Cthurath gear (see Gear).
• Dhalgar's Last Call (a recall to a tavern of your choice: 10-second cast, 1-hour recast): from the Banners of Thalumbra collection, through the Bottomless Dhalgar Stein. Set your tavern by talking to a bartender and picking the second option.
• Banners of Thalumbra, the Thalumbra overland meta collection (your choice of a Fabled level 108 ranged item with potency and crit chance, plus the Indicium of the Masterful toward Thalumbra Indicia): turn in the 13 banners from the Terrors of Thalumbra overland collections.

Guild Advancement Tokens

A Guild Advancement Token is a collection reward from Reign of Shadows and Visions of Vetrovia. You need five of them to get the full guild buff.

• How the guild buff works: your guild's level unlocks the guild buff in tiers. Up to level 300, every member gets every tier their guild has reached. The last five tiers, at guild levels 310, 320, 330, 340 and 350, are different: each one has to be unlocked by you, with a token.
• What each token does: it does two things at once. It raises your guild's level (up to the 350 cap), and it unlocks the next of those five tiers for your account. One token unlocks the 310 tier, two unlock 310 and 320, and so on. Five tokens unlock all five, so you get the whole buff your guild offers.
• Account-wide: the unlocks count for every character on your account, so you only collect them once.
• Where they come from: these collections each reward a token. Pick five you can finish:
  • Reign of Shadows: Luclin Treasures, Relics of the Darkside, Dangers of the Darkside, Depths of the Darkside, Shadows and Fear, Perils of Flight
  • Visions of Vetrovia: Visions of Vetrovia, Vetrovian Perceptions, Sights and Sounds of Vetrovia
• Without them: even in a level 350 guild, you only get the buff up to tier 300 until you've used your tokens.

The guild buff's tiers from 100 to 190 are listed on the Guilds tab. Once your tokens are in, examine the buff in game to see every bonus you've unlocked.

Awakened abilities and Epic 2.0 spells

• Awakened abilities: buy them from Maesy Colmiter in Sanctus Seru /waypoint -359, 90, 62. They include the Epic 2.0 spells, which most classes need.
• Upgrade recipe books: from Beluba, in a room on the second level of Sanctus Seru /waypoint 4, 181, -166. Crafting them needs tradeskill level 120. If you don't craft, buy the finished upgrades from a crafter or on the broker.
• Getting to Sanctus Seru: it's the Blood of Luclin city, next to The Blinding and the Aurelian Coast (see Leveling, How each expansion starts, for the way to Luclin). Inside, the colorful spherical teleporters move you between the city's levels.

Every New Expansion's Gear Outclasses the Last

Gear in EverQuest II climbs with every expansion. Each new one raises the bar: its free starter set beats the best gear most players earned in the expansion before it, and its mobs are built to match. That's great news for a new player, because you never have to farm old gear to catch up. Until level 95, wear whatever your quests and dungeons hand you; you'll outgrow it quickly, so there's no need to chase upgrades. At 95, Draconic Etyma buys your first real set, and from level 100 a free Tishan's Lockbox waits at the start of each expansion with a fresh set sized for it (both below).

Tishan's Lockbox: free gear from level 100

The first Tishan's Lockbox appears in Planes of Prophecy, the level 100 expansion, and every expansion since has one near its start. Click the box and it opens like a merchant window where every piece costs nothing: take each piece for your class, plus the mercenary set where one is offered. Equip it all before your first quest. The Resolve column shows how quickly gear climbs, and Resolve is the stat each new zone checks (see Resolve, below).

Each waypoint works only inside the zone named beside it. For the route to each zone, see "How each expansion starts" on the Leveling tab. Source: Tishan's Lockbox on EQ2i.

Gear basics: item tiers, tags and adornments

• Item tiers, lowest to highest: Uncommon, Treasured, Legendary, Fabled, then Mythical (class epic weapons). Ethereal and Celestial mark certain special items. Handcrafted and Mastercrafted label crafted gear.
• No-Trade: can't be given or sold to other players.
• Heirloom: can be passed to your own other characters through the shared bank, but not to other players.
• Attunable: tradeable until you attune it, then bound to you for good.
• Lore: you can only own one copy at a time.
• Adornment ("adorn"): an add-on that slots permanently into gear for extra stats or effects. Each gear piece has colored adornment slots, and an adornment only fits a slot of its color.
  To add one: right-click the adornment in your bags and choose Use, so your cursor starts to glow. Move it over the gear piece. If the gear glows blue, click it and confirm. You can often adorn gear you're wearing, but if a worn piece won't take it, take the piece off and try again from your bags.
  If it won't fit: a red glow means check the slot color and the adornment's level, and repair the gear at a mender if it's damaged.
  Removing one: adding an adornment to a filled slot replaces the old one, which is usually lost. To save it first, buy the Adornment Reclamation spell for 1 copper from any class trainer, whatever your own class: it pops every adornment out of a piece into your bags, keeping both the gear and the adornments. Tradeable adornments come back no-trade. Handy trainers in each starting city:
  • Qeynos: in front of the Palace Steps, North Qeynos (Qeynos Capitol District) /waypoint 397, -17, -32
  • Freeport: the Freeport Militia House, The City of Freeport /waypoint 139, -17, 137
  • Gorowyn: the trainers' hall in Gorowyn, Timorous Deep /waypoint 2530, 89, 1223
  • New Halas: the Wolf's Wrath, northwest New Halas (Frostfang Sea) /waypoint 129, 158, -147
  • Also Kelethin, outside the Protectors of Growth (Greater Faydark) /waypoint 328, 124, 286, and Neriak, the Spires of Innoruuk /waypoint -318, 26, 246

Resolve

Every encounter has a resolve rating, and every piece of current gear has a resolve value. If your total is below the encounter's, you take more damage and deal less, and the penalty grows faster the further behind you are. Having more resolve than the encounter gives no extra benefit.

Rage of Cthurath targets: 13,020 for Heroic 1, 13,120 for Untold Heroics (plus 10 per stage), and 13,230, 13,430 and 13,640 for raid tiers 1 to 3. A June 2026 update set the Gerion: Throne of Contention raid at 13,750, so check each zone before you go in. The free Tishan's Crate kit from For the Greater Good, the quest offered when you first zone into Yon Gorroth, meets the solo requirement.

Gearing up for Rage of Cthurath, in order

1. Free starter set: take For the Greater Good when you first zone into Yon Gorroth. Its Tishan's Crate holds a full level 130 set, plus a mount and a familiar. Loot Tishan's Lockbox at the zone entrance too /waypoint 566, 94, -689 (Yon Gorroth waypoint). See Leveling.
2. Resolve first: make sure your gear's resolve is high enough for the content you're doing, or you won't survive it (see Resolve, above).
3. Signature line rewards: work through the Rage of Cthurath signature line, starting with Lady Najena near the Gnollslayer Highlands rift in Antonica /waypoint -2084, 5, 117.
4. Black adornments: buy them from Kehar Time-Touched, the Chrono merchant in Yon Gorroth /waypoint 487, 81, -570, with currency from the Chrono dungeons (group content). The Void-Borne Runes set adds Fervor as you wear more pieces.
5. Green adornments that grow: the Spiritstone of Void Achievements levels up with fragments from almost every Rage of Cthurath achievement, and the Spirit of Gerion levels up each time you defeat an Untold Heroic zone boss once you've met that stage's requirements. Since June 2026, Garam in Yon Gorroth also sells a white adornment that grows as you progress through the Untold Heroics.
6. Mount gear: Mastercrafted Yon Gorroth Fervor saddle and shoes, from a crafter or the broker (see Tradeskills and Mounts).
7. Mercenary and familiar infusions: scrolls that pass part of your stats to your mercenary and familiar. The strongest come from Heritage Crates (see Mercenaries and Familiars).

The rule: stats now have an expiry date

Daybreak tied these stats to the expansion an item comes from: Crit Bonus, DPS, Fervor, Flurry, Flurry Multiplier, Haste, Melee Multiplier, Multi Attack and Weapon Damage. Other stats, such as Potency, aren't on the list, and the rule covers item effects (food, procs and item buffs), not the stats printed on a piece of gear.

• Food, drink and other used-up items only give those stats in zones from their own expansion. Ballads of Zimara food, for example, does nothing for them in Scars of Destruction or Rage of Cthurath zones.
• Item effects that aren't used up, such as permanent and triggered gear effects, last one expansion longer, then stop. Ballads of Zimara effects still work in Scars of Destruction zones, but not in Rage of Cthurath zones.
• Triggered effects must be worn. Many effects from equippable gear now only stay active while the item is actually equipped.

Mercenary gear: slots unlock with rank

Rank 1 opens head, chest and 2 accolades. Forearms open at 2, shoulders at 4, hands at 6, legs at 8, feet at 10. Odd ranks 3 through 9 each add an accolade, rank 10 adds one, and every second rank from 12 to 20 adds another. Mercs wear regular armor and unlimited relics as well as MERC-ONLY items.

What gearing a merc does: it makes the merc stronger, not you. A merc copies a share of your stats based on its rarity (40% for Treasured up to 80% for Celestial), and its own gear adds on top of that, so a geared merc heals, hits or tanks harder. It doesn't change your character's stats, and it doesn't add battalion points; only rarity and training rank do that.

• Armor: since Kunark Ascending, merc armor carries real stats, not just looks. Mercs can wear any armor type you own, whatever their class.
• Relics: a merc can wear as many as you give it, where you're limited to two.
• Accolades: mercenary-only items. Crafters make them, in handcrafted and mastercrafted versions, from the level 100 Clan Bloody Tooth Mercenary Gear recipe book. It's sold by Scribbleclaw, beside Oogthor in Twark, Obulus Frontier /waypoint 77, -165, -723, for Sovereign of Rile once you have enough Bloody Tooth Clan faction (Oogthor's daily and weekly crafting quests build both).Getting to Twark: the Obulus Frontier opens for every character on your account once any one of them finishes Kunark Ascending: Beyond the Veil. Then take a wizard spire to the Crusader Cave in the Obulus Frontier, or walk in through the cave in Kylong Plains /waypoint 2325, 161, -2927 (Kylong Plains waypoint). From the Crusader Cave, head north to Twark, the goblin camp on an islet between two branches of Warslik's River /waypoint 271, -180, -658. Crafters who finish Search and Rescue get the Twark Transport Totem, which teleports you straight there.
• Rank vs rarity when you summon: rank opens the slots, so a fully trained, fully geared Treasured merc often does more than a barely trained Celestial with most slots locked. Keep the Celestial training and swap it in once its slots open, around rank 10.

Merc gear stats and levels: what they mean

Merc gear reads just like your own. Each piece has a level, and your merc is always your level, so it can wear any piece up to your level. As with your own gear, each new expansion's merc pieces are far stronger than the last. Each piece also lists stats, and those go to the merc: Stamina and health keep it alive, Potency and Crit Bonus raise its damage and healing, Multi Attack, Haste or Casting Speed make it faster, and Resolve lets it keep up in new zones.

• Resolve matters most. Mercs face the same resolve checks you do in current content (see Resolve, above), so every merc has a built-in ability, Mercenary's Resolve, that raises the Resolve on its gear by 400%. A merc in old gear falls behind in new zones, and fresh gear puts it right back in the fight.
• See the climb: a crafted level 100 Bloody Tooth Battlemaster's Accolade gives 404.9 Potency, 140 Crit Bonus and 9 Resolve. The level 130 Formless Lockbox Accolade of Final Fortitude from the Rage of Cthurath Tishan's Lockbox gives over 45,000 Potency, 1,345 Crit Bonus and 600 Resolve.
• Free merc sets: recent Tishan's Lockboxes, including Rage of Cthurath's, offer a full set of merc armor alongside yours. Take it every time you start a new expansion (see Tishan's Lockbox, above).
• How it helps you: merc gear never changes your own stats, but a well-geared merc kills faster, heals you more and holds enemies better. That means quicker leveling, fewer deaths and harder fights you can take on with just the two of you.

Source: EQ2i's Mercenary's Resolve, Tishan's Lockbox (Yon Gorroth) and Mercenary Guide.

Mount gear: what it does for you

Mount gear goes on your mount, but every stat on it goes to you. Think of it as a second set of gear slots for your character: a geared mount adds the same kinds of stats your armor does, on top of everything you're already wearing. It's one of the cheapest power upgrades in the game, and it keeps working whether you're riding or not.

• Keep the mount equipped. Open your Character window (C), select the Mount tab, and put the mount in the main mount slot. Its gear stats only count from that slot, not from the appearance slot. They stay with you even in dungeons and crafting zones where the mount vanishes from view.
• Seven slots: Saddle, Hackamore, Reins, Breeching, Stirrup and Shoes each take one piece, and Barding can hold several. The slots open as you train the mount (see Mounts).
• Each piece adds one bonus, so pick for your job:
  • Fighting: Fervor, Crit Bonus, Potency, Crit Chance, Doublestrike, Ability Mod, Max Health or Power, and for tanks Mitigation, Block or Parry. In Rage of Cthurath, for example, the Yon Gorroth Saddle of Fervor adds 22.1 Fervor and the Yon Gorroth Barding of Bolstering adds 287.85 Max Health.
  • Crafting: durability, progress, success chance, critical success chance and tradeskill experience.
  • Harvesting: rare harvest chance, from pieces such as Finder's Stirrups and the saddles and hackamores of harvesting (see Maximize your harvests, below).
  • Status and flying: a Hackamore of Status raises the status you earn, and a Hackamore of Flight speeds up flying.
• Newer is stronger. Mount gear climbs with each expansion, just like armor. For Rage of Cthurath, the crafted Yon Gorroth set (level 135) is the one to wear.

Source: Mount Gear Summary, Yon Gorroth Mount Equipment and Mounts on EQ2i.

Getting mount gear

Most mount gear is crafted. For Rage of Cthurath, recipe vendors sell the Handcrafted Rage Mount Equipment book once you finish the crafting quest Destination Unknown: Gone Gorroth. Untold Heroic bosses past stage 20 can also drop mount gear. If you don't craft, buy pieces on the broker, which is usually cheaper than the store for this.

Crafting gear, expansion by expansion

Almost every expansion adds crafting gear through quest rewards, faction merchants and crafted pieces, so this isn't a full list. Instead, each row tells you the standout gear, where to go and who to see, and links to that expansion's crafting timeline on EQ2i, which lists every reward along the way.

Want every piece? EQ2i's Artisan Equipment category gathers every item a crafter can wear, and the Comprehensive Tradeskill Equipment List sorts the older pieces by trade. For harvesting gear, see Maximize your harvests below.

Maximize your harvests: rare and bountiful

Two harvesting stats decide how much you bring home. Rare harvest is your chance to pull a rare from a node. Bountiful harvest is your chance to get extra items from each pull. Both come from AA, gear, mount gear, familiars and potions, and they add together. Aim for over 100% rare, and 100% bountiful is the cap.

From the harvesting tab of Fizz's Rage of Cthurath spreadsheet.

The best gear: Buried Takish'Hiz contested

Most of the top harvesting gear (the Sparking Innovative set) is sold by Milicent Boomfligger in the Artisan's Ancilla, Buried Takish'Hiz: Empire of Antiquity (Contested) /waypoint 120, 31, 13, once you've done Gnorbert's quests in the same room. Finish its questline, then do the daily for currency: 3 per daily, or 6 for members. Each piece costs 25. It's worth farming this set before chasing the other options below.

Rare harvest chance

Mount gear

Most saddles and hackamores need a pattern drop, then crafting, and some need a one-use recipe book. The Formless saddle is best for bountiful and the Vacrul saddle for rare.

Familiars and mounts with rare harvest

Bountiful harvest chance

Harvesting speed

• Finish the Kunark Ascending Growf quests (see the Gathering Goblin on the Tradeskills tab). With them, your gathering goblin ability becomes a buff that sets your base harvest time to 1.5 seconds, and with 100% casting speed from the items below it drops to 0.75 seconds per node.
• Gi of the Ashen Artisan, the Compact Sumac Harvesting Kit and the Overclocked Automated Combine Harvester each cut 0.5 seconds.

Honorable mention: the Sparking Innovative Gloves from the same contested merchant give +20 max crafting without the AA. Not a harvesting item, but handy for crafters.

Plumes: the feather in your Event Slot

A plume is a feather you equip in the Event Slot, the feather-shaped slot at the lower right of your Character window (C). Plumes come from live events and from crafters, and each one adds a stat. They also amplify: the more people in your group or raid wearing a plume, the stronger yours gets, up to double its base value. Most plumes can be worn from level 1.

The kinds of plume

• Critical plumes add Crit Bonus. Striking plumes add Ability Doublecast. Robust plumes add Max Health.
• Quality, from lowest to highest: Inspired (crafted), then Enduring, then Genuine, which you buy from event merchants after earning achievements. For example, Inspired Critical Plume of Darkpaw adds 931.9 Crit Bonus and Genuine Critical Plume of Darkpaw adds 1,150.9.
• Amplifying Plumes (2025 and 2026) are newer and more specialized. Each comes as a crafted I and a stronger II from an event achievement:
  • Faultless Sight adds Crit Bonus Overcap, but only inside Chrono Dungeon zones.
  • Calefaction Cutter adds Fervor Overcap, but only inside active Hot zones.
  • Environ Infernum sometimes fires an area attack when you're hit, and Environ Linimentum sometimes heals your group.

How a new player gets one

1. Buy or ask for an Inspired plume. Any crafter with the recipe book can make the Inspired plumes, and they're attunable, so they can be traded until you equip them. Search the broker for "Plume", or ask a crafter friend or your guild. A Critical plume is the usual pick for damage dealers. Materials to bring a crafter (made at a sewing table):
   • Inspired Darkpaw plumes (the stronger ones, such as Inspired Critical Plume of Darkpaw): 2 Nilborien Hide, 1 Circinata Root, 1 Rainbow Corymbia Wood, 1 Dasheen, plus 6 Zimaran Filament as fuel.
   • Inspired Jubilation plumes (such as Critical Plume of Inspired Jubilation): 2 Augmented Leather Pelt, 1 Oak Root, 1 Engraved Leather Pelt, 1 Dandelion Fiber, plus 6 Luminous Filament as fuel.
   Search the broker for these, or ask your crafter which ones they already have. Crafters buy fuel from crafting supply merchants.
2. Summer Jubilee (June to early September): finish the solo dungeon Triad of Elements, reached through a celestial aperture portal in the Moors of Ykesha /waypoint 1735, 452, 752 (Globe of Swift Travel to Moors of Ykesha) while the event runs. That unlocks the Jubilation plumes to buy, and later achievements unlock better ones.
3. Chronoportal Phenomenon (spring): event achievements unlock the Darkpaw plumes and Amplifying Plume recipes from the merchants Distun Delki and Erben Delki in the center of The Chronoweave /waypoint -4, 0, -12, paid for with Ancient Platinum Coins. Reach The Chronoweave through any chronoportal during the event, such as the one by the lighthouse at Coldwind Point, Antonica /waypoint 373, -15, 780.

The crafted Amplifying Plumes are no-trade, so only the crafter can wear them. A plume's bonus is a "when equipped" item effect, so the expiry rule above can apply to older plumes: check your plume's stat inside a Rage of Cthurath zone. See Plume on EQ2i for every plume and the achievements that unlock them.