Everquest Seeds of Destruction Mercenaries
With the release of the Seeds of Destruction expansion pack, Everquest introduced mercenaries - these are NPC’s that you hire to take into battle with you. This is an absolutely massive game changer! It basically means that any class can solo now with the aid of a mercenary. Currently there are only two types available and I have tried both and they are both awesome!
What are Mercenaries?
An Everquest mercenary acts like an additional player in the game. Unlike pets, they are part of your group and cannot be directly controlled or only in a limited way. For example, the tank type mercenary can be set to passive (where he basically does nothing) or aggressive where he will taunt any mobs that engage the group. However you cannot tell him specifically which mobs to target. Similarly, the healer mercenary will cast buffs and heals when it sees fit but it makes its own decisions to do so, and you yelling, “I need a heal!!” doesn’t help 
However, unless you get in a really sticky situation the mercenaries do very well. The AI programmed into them is actually quite impressive. For example, I have a level 60 druid and I have a tank mercenary for her and I took them into the Crypt of Nadox to camp a druid item that drops there. Some of the mobs there will enrage when their health gets low and when enraged they will riposte every hit which means that if you are meleeing the mob you will die very quickly. The standard tactic is to simply turn off attack when the mob enrages and turn it back on when they are no longer enraged and I was delightfully surprised to see my mercenary tank do just that! In some ways its even better than a real player because he knows exactly when these things happen - he knows as soon as a new mob engages the group whereas a real player needs to be on the ball to notice these things.
What Mercenary Types Are Available?
Currently there are only two types of Everquest mercenaries available - a healer and a tank. They are cleric and warrior classes respectively and they do just what you would expect them to do at their level. The warrior will taunt mobs, the cleric will buff you and heal you. Incidentally the healer is also aware of pets so if you have a pet class it will also buff your pet and try to keep it alive.
Sony have stated that more mercenary types are expected to be released later but they expect some ‘tweaking’ to be done so that won’t be for a little while yet. Rumors suggest that a DPS based class will be next.
How Do Mercenaries Work?
When you buy a mercenary it is always at your level and it will level up with you. I noticed that when my druid levelled to 60, her tank mercenary got himself some whips instead of his swords so they upgrade their gear as they level. The cleric will also upgrade his spells as he levels. Note that this is automatic - you don’t need to equip them or buy spells for them.
The mercenaries always follow you around. If you are a caster class and you gate, they gate with you. With my druid I wondered if I needed to do a group port to port him around but I don’t! I just port myself as normal and he magically follows me. If I die, he will appear with me at my bind point. However note that the cleric mercenary can rez you if you die though I haven’t had a chance to test that yet thankfully!
You can ’suspend’ your mercenary so that you are not charged for his services when not required but once suspended you will have to wait 5 minutes before you can unsuspend him. Note that with the cleric mercenary the first thing he will do when out of combat is make sure that you are fully buffed. One tactic I have seen people doing is to hire the cleric mercenary just for buffs and leave him suspended most of the time. This works out cheaper than donating for buffs in Plane of Knowledge
Your mercenary can die just like any other player however their death works differently to ours. Basically when they die they behave as if they have been suspended and you cannot bring him back to life for 5 minutes. However when he comes back he is fully functional and does not suffer from ressurection sickness like players do.
How Much Do Mercenaries Cost?
There are different tiers available. Upon purchasing Seeds of Destruction, Apprentive Tiers I through V are unlocked and so is Journeyman Tier I however to unlock higher Journeyman tiers and Master tiers require that you complete quests from the expansion pack. Each tier costs more than the last and the higher level you are the more expensive your mercenary will be.
There are two costs involved. There is an up-front hire fee which basically buys your mercenary. At level 58 the Journeyman Tier 1 mercenary cost be 1,200 pp. I don’t remember exactly how much my cleric one was. I believe it was around 350pp at level 30. You only have to pay this fee once and then you pay an upkeep fee for every 15 minutes that they are active. Note that unlike tribute timers, the mercenary timer stops the moment you suspend him so you literally only pay for exactly the amount of time you have him active for.
At level 33, my J1 cleric merc is costing me 8p 1g and at level 60 my warrior merc is costing me 25p 8g per 15 minutes. At those levels the money is easily recouped through regular hunting.
Are the Mercenaries Effective?
I suppose it depends on your class and your play style but for the druid and shadowknight that I am currently using them on they are brilliant. My druid can solo very effectively but using a root/dot method it is quite slow. At level 59 in Blackfeather Roost it was taking me several minutes to kill one mob. However with my tank mercenary I can let him tank away whilst I keep regen and a damage shield on him, I dot the mob as usual and throw a heal on the mercenary if I need to. Being a warrior, he doesn’t have the damage output of some of the other classes like a rogue for example but he kills way faster than my druid could alone! The result was that I was getting xp several times faster than I was alone, I was getting much more loot in the process and he pays for himself many times over.
Also, having a mercenary allows you to do some things that you simply couldn’t do solo. Druids for example shine in the outdoors where they have room to kite and have to be careful indoors. Crypt of Nadox for example was doable but tricky. If I got adds I had to succor out of there but with my mercenary he can happily tank 2 or 3 mobs at once which I simply couldn’t do otherwise.
Similarly my cleric mercenary allows my shadowknight to take on much tougher mobs, to go into places where adds would mean that he would be overwhelmed and of course, avoid downtime. Before mercs came along I was burning through a lot of potions (also awesome, I’ll write a post about those too!) and I still had downtime between fights. The healer merc grouped with a class that can tank opens up a whole new dimension to the game.
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Everquest Spell List Guide
When Everquest first came out the maximum level that a player could reach was 50, and of those classes that could cast spells, new spells became available only every 4 levels in most cases. As a result, there weren’t that many spells in the game and the Everquest spell list for each caster class did not change very much so you could rely on the popular websites at the time to carry an accurate spell list for your class.
10 years on things have changed! The level cap is now 85 (with Seeds of Destruction expansion pack) and many of the previous expansion packs have introduced new spells not only at the higher levels but at the lower levels too. Each new expansion pack brings in new port spells for druids and wizards, the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion brought in a whole line of spells related to dungeon traps and so on.
What this means is that you can no longer get an accurate Everquest spell list from a static website! What is needed now is a proper database of available spells that can be interrogated and searched easily. Thankfully, such websites are available and they are free.
The Allakhazam Everquest Spell List
If you type in everquest spell list into Google, the first result is likely to be a dynamically created page from the Allakhazam spell database. There are some other Everquest spell databases around but most of them are out of date but Allakhazam is still running now and is updated almost daily with new information so it is undoubtedly the most accurate site around and should still be long time after I write this guide.
From the main database page you can either type in a search term to search for or you can use the drop down options to select a spell list for your chosen class and level. Pick a class, pick a level and then use the radio buttons to show either just the spells for that level, or that level and lower or higher. It would be nice if it allowed you to enter in a level range but it does the job.
The Allakhazam Everquest spell list database will show all of the spells available at each 36 and show the in-game graphic for each one as well as some basic information as to what the spell does, how much mana it costs, what kind of target if affects and what spell skill it uses. In addition, if you click on the name of the spell from the spell list you are taken to a page with more detailed information which will show you where you can obtain the spell and more details about its precise effects.
The Lucy Everquest Spell List
From the above spell detail pages you will also notice that each spell contains a link to its entry in another Everquest database site called Lucy. This is part of Allakhazam but contains far more detailed information about the spell effects. Lucy is the most comprehensive information on Everquest spells that can be found on the Internet today. In addition Lucy also has quick links to spell lists for all of the casting classes and this brings up a list of spells in alphabetical order as opposed to the level order in which Allakhazam returns them.
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Everquest Maps - World Map, In-Game Maps & Map Mods
Everquest has expanded massively since its first launch and now boasts several hundred zones! To get around in the game, you need some Everquest maps! Thankfully travel is a lot easier now than it was in the early years as the in-game map system has improved but also, since the introduction of the XML-based user interface system, maps can now be downloaded and imported into the game.
The Everquest World Map
The Everquest world map can now be viewed in game by pressing your ‘m’ key. This brings up a map window that shows two tabs - one for the current zone and an atlas which shows the world map. This is what the world map now looks like:
You can then click on any of the named areas to bring up an area of that region which shows all of the zones in that region and how they are connected so you can now use that to plan your route.
Everquest In-Game Maps
As you move around in-game the map of the current zone updates to show where you are. The trouble is that by default the only in game maps that are supplied are the major cities, none of the dungeons are included for example. But now you can download full sets of Everquest maps from many download sites and import these into your game.
Perhaps the best source of Everquest maps is Mapfiend which has many maps packs that you can download. You can download a pack for each individual expansion pack or you can download a pack for all everquest maps in the entire game.
Everquest Map Mods
Another way you can enhance the look of the EQ maps in the game is to download a map mod which is part of the XML user interface. The best place to get all sorts of mods is the website EQ Interface. Specially check out the selection of map windows that you can download. This changes your current in-game map window to the one selection. Full installation instructions are provided with the downloads.
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