Having a bit of troubleish... maybe.Follow

1: 500p wouldn't be bad, if you were getting exp with it. Rathe Mtn giants in the NE corner hill, you can make over 1Kp per hour and they'll still be a little bit of exp. Just kill everything on the hill other than the named NPCs, all the cyclops, giants, orcs, lizards, etc. If you have good faction there is a merchant just north of the hill in the huts that will give an ok amount for the fine steel weapons (not as much as other places, but that's pretty much all that people sell to him), so you can make a little more.

Goru'kar Mesa animals are weak, and drop good vendor stuff, that sells for 20-40p like Section of a Wolf Pancreas for 37ish pp or Wolf Teeth for 3ish pp both off a mesa wolf along with the item drops that may be upgrades, and the tradeskill supplies like the various quality wolf pelts, and the quest items for some extra exp. Look at the bears and cats also, as they're also weak. The Tuffein are even better exp, similar loot, but aren't weak cons and alot tougher, but if you and your merc can handle them, they should be awesome exp.

Alot of people recommend Blackfeather Roost for your level, due to the gem drops and good exp also. As far as a good place to farm defiant gear, Dulak's Harbor is a good zone for drops. Any place with 40s mobs should drop a mix of Ornate (26-40 level) and Flawed (37-50 level) gear.

2: That's a tough call for Shm and depends alot on situations, and seem to have way too few spell gems until higher level with AAs, and combo buffs / spells. I like the curse dots myself, they seem to give the most damage per mana cost and used to only be from LDoN merchants, but are available in PoK now too. At your level, I don't worry about it too much and focus mostly on keeping the tank buffed up, and using low damage nuke to pull with, so the tank can grab aggro easily, and only slow when a named or something the merc will have trouble with. At your level, I try to keep combat spells, including an optional Malo, and a Slow down to 5, and leave 3 for buff rotation. This usually includes Haste, and short duration proc spell, and another short duration spell, that I rotate out, when the merc's buffs wear off.

I also use the spell sets alot. At 67, my shaman has the following sets saved: Buffs (current level), Buffs_Newbie, Buffs_Resist, Buffs_Stats, default, Group_Slows

Your tactics sound reasonable, there are some options, but with only 2 dots, root rotting is probably out. It's not really very effective with a tank merc at that level though either, it's just something different. It's pretty much how I play, although depending on the mobs, I may not cast as many dots / nukes to try to save mana, and use a root when they run, since it's probably less mana and will hold the time it takes to finish them off usually, instead of a nuke costing more mana and not killing them instantly.

3: Going after gear isn't necessary while leveling upto 59/60, just use what you find. At 59+, you can usually find most visible pieces of defiant in the bazaar for relatively cheap (total of a few 1000pp including chest and legs). That's usually a good time to start investing in Trio jewelry as well, but that good slot 11 stones are expensive. See http://nathrach.republicofnewhome.org/gizmotron/

Keep doing the hotzone quests, to get the 3 pieces from there and the good exp.

And you sound pretty lucky with defiant drops from what you have accumlated. Defiant isn't really common and with the wide variety of types, makes it feel rare to get the pieces you need.

4: Keep playing with the merc. Try to get into groups when you can. Your guild will probably have alts, they're willing to group with you at the Farm in Dragonscale Hills at 65+ and if they're into it, should be good experience for lots of mobs and fast pulls to get you into a routine. Some people don't like the tempo, but if you plan on raiding, raids will be a similar tempo. From your description of tactics, seems like you've already learned alot about grouping with your merc, as you don't pull with high aggro spells, give the tank time to build up a bit of aggro, heal when you need to, etc. It's definitely not the same as being in a group, but it's about as close as you can get without a real one.

Communication is probably the big thing missing from a merc duo. Since you're doing the pulling, you know when to stop. In a real group, you'll probably have to let the puller / tank know when you're low on mana and need to med before pulling alot (or any) more, or to avoid nameds for a while. Also, it depends if you're primary role in a group is healer, or slower/dps or jack-of-all fill in guy. As shaman, before AAs, being primary healer / buffer, will take up the majority of your time and mana and resources. With another dedicated healer, you can focus on buffs and debuffs and DPS. If the group is really pushing the boundries of it's capabilities, you'll probably be the JoT do whatever is needed at the moment person. All 3 role types should keep you busy. With a merc duo, I try to not do quite as much to conserve mana and keep the merc buffed and ready, for continous killing.

It takes practice and experience, but eventually you'll figure out good grooves to be in for varying situations. Definitely by 65-70 try to get some real group experiences, and with being in a guild you should be able to.

I may come back and edit in the complete spell sets and give some links to some good AA guides, but I'm just gonna stop for now, and go back to sleep :)

Yther Ore.

Wow, thanks a ton for the information, I truly appreciate it. Good to hear I'm on the right track more or less. Thanks so much for the responses! I'll just keep trucking along and try to get into some groups. Once I get higher, I'll be able to get into some guild groups more then likely, my guild is just quite top heavy. Thanks again!

Just for info sake , I was asking the exact same questions at about the same level. It was I think about 55th level or so when I could finally relax from having to worry about money. Bear in mind from 45-55ish I was eating probably 3 or 4 peridots per fight so that was a chunk of change. As Yther mentioned above, the Mesa is where things seemed to financially stabilize, as it were- good drops pretty common

Thanks again for all the advice everyone. I tried the /barter thing, but can't use it since I don't have RoF. Oh well, it is a cool feature. Anyway, I just really wanted to thank you all again for taking the time to answer my questions and to help me out so much, it's one thing EQ has on every other MMO, be it 1999 or today, is the community is the absolute best. Thanks again!

You can use barter to sell things. You just need to be in the Bazaar to use it.

Go in the Bazaar and type /barter and you'll get a list of all the stuff on your person. You can click each thing (might have to click an "Barter" button as well) and it'll give you a list of everyone in the Bazaar who wants to buy it and what they're offering to pay. Then you manually go to them and conduct the transaction just like selling to a vendor. Note that Barter vendors ar ein the Blue Dragon wing of the bazaar, separate from the sellers in the Red Dragon wing.

This can be a way to make a little profit off hides, ores, silks and other trade skill components. One trick is to go to one of the NPC vendors in the Bazaar and open the buy/sell window. Then type /barter and open THAT window. Now you can quickly see the NPC is offering vs what any players might be offering and unload your "junk" on the NPC before heading off to sell the rest of your swag to the PC barter folks.

Note that you can actually use /barter outside of the Bazaar and "in the field" to price check stuff and see if it's worth the bag space. Won't give you the NPC price of course but if you already know the NPC vendor price is minimal (say on medium pelts) then you can at least see if anyone in the Bazaar would be willing to buy it and whether or not you should bother with it.

Edited, Sep 12th 2013 8:23am by Jophiel

Looking stuff up on Alla, Lucy, etc. is a good plan too for items, especially LORE ones, since they often have a high tribute value and you can turn them in for favor points or sell them for about 1/8th the tribute value in platinum (unless they value higher innately). An example is Blade of Carnage has 36K+ tribute value, but is worth 15K at a minimum and as much as 45K; way more than 4.5K 1/8th tribute value would be.

If interested in Tribute, see https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Tribute and be aware that spell foci don't stack, other than worn and spell. That is, 2 different worns, only the best, most effective will be in effect, and similar on multiple buffs, only the best buff will be in effect. Other things that stack sometimes have caps, and you find most of those listed at Samanna at http://samanna.net/gen.info/effects.shtml with the except of hp regen beign 35 upto level 65, then +2 to the cap for every level above 65. I.e. 37 at 66, 39 at 67, ... 95 at 95, 105 at 100.

Yther Ore.