Hi, I used to play off and on from release and right up to around the Khitan expansion, which I looked at, but never really played. I originally leveled 1 character to 80 on a PvP server, my Tempest of Set. During one of the times I came back, I had all these ‘free’ levels to give to alts and raised two of my alts, a 50ish Guardian and a 20ish Demonologist both to 80. I have no idea how to relearn/play any of these characters though! lol
Logging into those characters was a bit overwhelming. They have lower level gear, lots of skills, items, quests, changes, and veteran rewards, etc that I am confused by so my plan is to start a new fresh character to re-familiarize myself with the game.
I am mainly coming back to play through the quests and explore all the zones and see what was added since I quit. What would be a good class for soloing through story/quest content? I have been reading the forums here and people say bear shamans and HoX are both really strong solo’ers. True? I would lean more towards HoX, it seems more my playstyle, but if shamans are just OP I would probably have fun with that too. I have 720+ day veteran rewards so it looks like I get ANOTHER free level 80 character but with free ‘rare’ gear so it would end up my best geared character. I think I will level either a bear shaman or HoX and then boost the other class to 80. Looking for suggestions
I am coming from Anarchy Online, where third party apps and custom GUIs really improve the experience. Are there any up to date, must have apps or popular GUI mods/addons I should bookmark and eventually look into?
Lasty: the item shop. it has a ton more stuff available than when I last played and I have ~15000 funcom points from various deals I’ve gotten over the year from AO subscriptions. What would be the best bang for my buck to spend that on? I see what looks like an expansion available “Hyborian Tales: Shadow of Vanaheim”. Is it an expansion? it says it is account wide so I figure I will buy that for sure, is there anything else really worth having?
Thanks in advance for any advice/tips/links. I am sifting through the forums here right now, but are there any other good resources for a returning player? thanks!
I found both where easy enough to level, died less on the BS, but was faster on the HOX and more enjoyable for my play style. From a knowledge at 80 standpoint level ling a BS can help you learn the class and the large amount of micromanagement it requires to be very effective. Long and short is both are fun choices and you are good either way…HOX
Helps to have heals when you’re leveling, so I would go with BS to get back in the groove of combining combos, heals and abilities smoothly. Also… thing about HoX… it is definitely a fun and strong class, but doesn’t come into its own until almost fully leveled and you get all your morph feats. At the beginning, you have to get to level 14 before you can effectively use its key dps spell, Hellfire Breath.
P.S. HoX has terrible graphic bugs, so you may find yourself with 13 swords on your back (at least, I have) and your sword and xbox melded together, so you don’t know what weapon is in your primary slot.
HoX isn’t very good for soloing in my opinion. It is fun to play, but a bit too squishy to be an easy solo class.
Bear Shamans are quite nice. Sturdy, and with good self-heals, and decent damage.
Easiest to solo, in my opinion, would be Conqueror. Deals good damage, and is hard to kill.
Shadows of Vanaheim is a sort of mini-expansion. General opinion is that it isn’t very good, but if you Funcom points to spend, you can try it out for yourself.
I’ve always found the Dark Templer to be the easiest to solo, especially if you don’t plan on raiding with it and DPS spec it. Able to wade in and hold it’s own right from the start.
OK, so there’s the Godslayer expansion. You get a new race and a large playfield. I’m not a real fan of it as it’s all faction questing. On the first map you pick 4 out of 8 and the ones you don’t pick become your enemies. You then do the same 4 - 5 quests over and over again to level up in the faction so you can buy faction armor. Now if you’re F2p with that lovely 10g limit, most of the faction armor won’t be buyable as it costs more than 10g. Lovely area, some nice raids / dungeons and 2 different faction mounts. Has a total of 4 maps are a bit harder than the last.
Adventure packs:
Hyborian Tales: Shadow of Vanaheim - levels to you starting at lvl 20 so you could actually just level to 80 inside the pack without ever questing in any other zone. Part of it is reused maps, the Connel’s Valley village and the ice field where you search for that guys arrows, with 2 more maps. Now I found the first 3 maps fun, number 2 and 3 are easily farmed. The last is more spread out and not as fun. It’s a single faction place that doesn’t seem to level very well, or at least I can’t figure it out .
Turan - listed as level 50 - 55 quests and is great for it. Also has 2 areas that levels to you so good for farming. Plus a couple of raids / dungeons. Also a single faction place but’s it’s very easy to level up and the 2 repeatable quests after you finish the quest line are quickly done.
DragonSpine - now as a past subscriber before the game went F2p you should have gotten this zone (lvl 80+) for free. Seems that was kind of hit or miss as some of us did and some didn’t; including a husband and wife team that were both subbed the same time, stopped the same time, came back the same time and 1 had it and 1 didn’t. If you don’t have it you might try a /petiition point out you subbed from X to X and why don’t you have it. Can’t hurt. Not a bad area, gives you something hard to do when you hit max level.
Vet Tokens / Funcom points: Best bang: I’d say max inventory bag, the paths to various locations and whatever extra play area’s you want.
Biggest change since you left is probably that the expansion / adventure packs are all just Buy to Play now. You don’t have to buy passes or have an active sub. All a F2p player needs is to own them to quest in them.
Please check my recent post - 2019 new players for some useful info. Don’t spend funcom points on expansions, you can buy the Age of Conan: Hyborian Conqueror Collection Digital Download CD Key on Kinguin which includes ALL expansions for about the price of 1 in the item store.