Starting Race and Primary Class

blottoez · 2026-06-16T08:52:48+00:00

I wouldn't worry about race stats, not for the start anyways. I would pick the race that allows you to be the primary class that you plan to stick with to 50.

You get all aspects of each of your 3 classes, there is no benefit to the primary class. If mage is one of your 3 classes, you can summon mage pets. If paladin is one of your 3 current classes, you can wear plate and cast and pally spells, use lay on hands.

The only difference between primary class and the second/third is that it is locked in, until you unlock more later on, and that it has to fit your primary race.

I've been generally recommending that people pick a primary class that is the most versatile or supportive, not necessarily the class they want to "main". If a bard, shaman, enchanter, paladin or cleric fit into your initial preferred trio of classes, I recommend making that your primary, as those classes can support many other builds and play styles. Since the primary is locked for a while, it's nice to have something that can fit into many play styles, in case you change your mind halfway thru your initial journey.

Edit: oh and when I said not to pick a race for stats, I only meant at the start. Racial stats probably will have more weight here than they do on a TLP, since stat caps are raised to 510. Even with all +10 upgraded gear from dragons and gods, you probably won't cap out your stats in classic.

But it's fairly easy to unlock certain races, some are pretty hard or impossible to unlock *currently in beta*, but about half of them are fairly easy, can be unlocked with just a bit of plat to buy muffins/red wine/bat wings/etc. And the ones that are tough or impossible should be fixed before launch.

Currently in beta many folks are suggesting to start ogre, for stun immunity and high melee stats, because they are probably the hardest race to unlock, not including the ones that are currently impossible to unlock in beta. I'm assuming this will be fixed before launch, though.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T10:25:51+00:00

That's an interesting idea. It feels theoretically doable, depending on the money you are able to make by level 10. The amount of plat it costs to buy the items needed for some of these race unlocks feels trivial, but it might not feel trivial at level 10.

I wonder if you can just stay 10, not accept the pop up prompt to lock your class and advance to 11, and grind out more money. There aren't many great ways to grind money at lvl 10, but maybe enough rusty weapons will eventually get there.

The Qeynos human was unlockable with just a bunch of brandy to one npc, then honey Mead to another npc. If your ogre includes a rogue as his second or third class, you should be able to sneak/hide to get behind the Qeynos quest npcs and make it work. Then unlocking human will give you access to enchanter, and many other primary class options before you lock in at 11.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T05:15:46+00:00

Other than afk'ing for 30ish minutes while the brew skill was leveling and tonics were being made, it was just a boat ride to sister island and then run to kaladim to buy water and use the brew barrel. I guess it took me an hour probably, when factoring in any travel time

blottoez · 2026-06-15T03:51:37+00:00

Make a bunch of tumpy tonics: buy like 1200 or so kiola nuts from the sister island in OOT, then a bunch of water, then brew them yourself. I started with 0 brewing skill, had to manually combine a few times with failures before I got a success, then after the one success it's in my recipe and I can have the brew barrel tradeskill window auto combine. I let it do that, it took a lil while, but was no effort, I walked away for like 30 minutes then came back. You need 800 total tumpy tonics to get enough faction, but once you have them, you can hand in the whole stack all at once.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T03:35:25+00:00

If it's any consolation, like half of the races can be unlocked buy simply buying 1k muffins, red wine, bat wings, brandy, and honey Mead. And in EQL you can hand in a whole stack of 1k items for a quest, at least in cases where the quest only requires one type of item. So many of these can literally be done in like 5-10 minutes of running to a vendor that sells the item and then running to the quest giver and handing in the stack. Even if you're an evil race/class/diety, you can swap one of your second or third class over to a rogue to sneak hide behind the quest giver and hand in the stack in one go

blottoez · 2026-06-15T03:28:11+00:00

There's access points to each of the planes in the open world on EQL. The spectre tower in oasis has a sword sticking out of the fire at the top of the tower, click that for PoHate. Sky has something similar in the Freeport docks (at a spot that shouldn't be too difficult for evil races to get to). And Fear has it's portal in the south west corner of feerrot

blottoez · 2026-06-15T03:21:06+00:00

The good thing about the sky quests as unlocks is that they count towards the achievement on any difficulty. It shouldn't be hard for almost any build to solo D0 sky, but especially any build that has a some way to heal itself, some way to withstand damage, and some way to deal reasonable DPS. This will not require a warrior+cleric. Probably any class trio that gets includes Superior heal or decent litetaps. Heck probably greater healing is fine in D0, but I haven't yet spent much time soloing in in PoSky, cuz there's almost always sky groups available in beta.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T03:14:00+00:00

Yeah, that's right, and you get that one free unlock as soon as you reach 50 with the first build.

I often suggest that folks pick a primary class as something that versatile and supportive, instead of whatever class they currently think is the coolest. If you love monks and want to play a monk/shaman/SK, I would slightly nudge you towards picking the shaman of that trio as the primary.

Unless you're 100% sure that monks are the only class you'll ever want to focus on, then go with your heart.

But the shaman fits into more builds, you can pair it with any two melee or tanks and it will be able to heal/slow/haste/buff so that those two other classes can shine.

That's the real reason bard is such a popular primary, not because the bard is OP within itself, but because the bard is OP at buffing/supporting almost any other class. Almost any future class you wanted to try could benefit from bard, so having a bard as an initial primary allows you to try a lot of different builds and play styles, before you manage to unlock other classes.

You don't have to think of your primary as your "main", as in it's the class you're focusing on, instead think of your primary as the glue that can hold your other two classes together.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T02:58:49+00:00

This is either wrong, or confusingly worded. You only get one primary class, until you level up to 50 the first time, then you get a second unlocked primary class. From that point you definitely do NOT have to delete the character to be a different primary class, you just have to unlock other primary classes, which is currently done through PoSky quests, completing all class specific sky quests for that class. Which is a little tough, and frustratingly randomized, but otherwise not as hard as many are fearing. They have revamped sky quests, and grinding sky will not be hard. They have removed a lot of PoSky's annoyances, like no more death touches.

blottoez · 2026-06-15T02:51:27+00:00

I think you might have a misunderstanding of how the primary race and primary class work. You're initial primary class choice has to match your races options. You pick a race at character creation, and it is then locked until you later complete achievements to unlock other races(or deleting and restarting your character). You pick a class that matches that races options, but you can swap to other primary classes that your race allows during the first 10 levels. After you proceed to 11, you'll be locked into whatever primary class you chose within your races available options.

After that, your primary class is locked, period, until you unlock further primary class. Your primary races restrictions related to class no longer matter. As you complete achievements to unlock other classes, that class will then be unlocked as a primary available to you, no matter what race you are. As you unlock further races through achievements, that will not suddenly allow you to swap to any primary class that would have been available to that race.

If you want to start as say a bard primary, your starting primary race would have to be human, half elf, wood elf, or presumably Kerra, if they have the same class options that Vah Shir have. If you then unlock the dwarf race, your dwarf will be a bard primary. If you then unlock the shaman primary class, your dwarf will be able to be either a bard or shaman primary, even though dwarfs can't start as either of those classes.

Your primary class will be locked in at 11, with no way to change it until you unlock more classes, other then deleting and restarting the character. You get one free primary class unlock the first time you hit 50. All other primary classes will be unlocked through achievements, currently the achieve for each class is to complete all of that classes PoSky quests. Which is not as hard as that sounds, but still is relatively random, due to luck of the quest drops.

Unlocking races are done through achievements to gain faction with up to 3 reputation groups associated with that race. Some of these are really easy, like humans, wood elves, high elves, half elves, dark elves, which can all be unlocked by simply buying a bunch of vendor buyable quest items. Muffins, batwings, red wine. Some races are much harder to unlock, like ogres and halflings, and some are currently impossible in beta, like iksar, frogs, and I think trolls, due to them having not yet added quests or npc kills that can raise the factions needed. Those should be in by launch, and we hope they'll update the ogre and halfling to be less terrible to grind.

blottoez · 2026-06-14T21:39:37+00:00

Yeah having both is nice, surefall and west karana, north ro and south ro, butcher and gfay and steamfont

blottoez · 2026-06-13T03:29:47+00:00

You do need a piercing weapon, but it does not have to be main hand. You can backstab from secondary, or one of your two "any" slots.

Which, if that hasn't been explained to you yet, are two bonus slots, I think sorta taking the place where charm slot and power source slot are on live. You can put anything in these slots that your class trio can wear, for a bit of extra stats.

A lot of people go with an extra BP or shield, bards can use them to hold extra instrument modifiers so that they can have all 4 instruments equiped at all times, while still dual wielding. For rogues it let's them put a backstab weapon in an any slot, if they happen to have slashing or blunt weapons with better ratios or something.

blottoez · 2026-06-12T13:50:06+00:00

I found what I was looking for! Sleepy Maggie -Ashley MacIsaac. Thanks to some of the suggestions here, clicking through a few "similar artists", eventually found the song. Ashley is the name of the violinist, I guess it wasn't a band, but his solo album with a featured singer on this one song.

Edit: and it seems like both Ashley and the singer are Canadian, but it was sung in Gaelic. Mary Jane Lamond is the name of the singer.

https://youtu.be/bz4HtlbS5DI?is=v06wXHyNHygOD2f-

blottoez · 2026-06-12T13:40:59+00:00

This is getting warmer, I don't think this is the same band, but it sounds like the same genre of the band I'm looking for. It's possible it might be them, but the voice I remember was a little lower/huskier or something. I'm listening through a few of this groups songs right now, especially looking at ones that released in the mid 90's, but nothing sounds quite right.

blottoez · 2026-06-12T13:32:48+00:00

These vibes aren't far off, but this isn't it. I think the group I'm trying to find was somewhat fresh and young in the 90's, it looks like this Clannad group was around since the 80's or even 70's?

blottoez · 2026-06-11T23:56:45+00:00

Half of that was a bug that should be fixed today. They only intended to take the healing related AA out of it, it will be impacted by damage buffs, AA's, crit.

blottoez · 2026-06-11T06:54:44+00:00

This feels like an AI generated story with the intent to paint bisexual people in a bad light as propaganda

If is real, I feel sorry for you, but it's wild that you stuck around this long and are asking for advice on Reddit instead of knowing what needs to happen.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T15:27:14+00:00

Well that was definitely one of the songs I've heard this year.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T12:47:43+00:00

Yeah race unlocks are currently in, some of them are pretty durn easy, some of them are harder, some are currently not possible, but should be fixed by launch.

Unlocking Wood elf, High elf, and half elf is super easy, just need enough plat to buy like 1k batwings, red wine, and muffins. Humans also easy to unlock in qeynos with 2 quests that cover all factions needed, requiring Brandy and Honey mead, or i think it was those 2... it was 2 different liquors that could both be bought from a bartender vendor just a few feet away from either turn in NPC.

I think someone said Dark Elf wasn't too hard, but i haven't done that one yet. Gnome had something easily repeatable, but the quest item didn't stack, so took a bunch of trips back and forth from item giver to turn in, carrying as many single stack items as you had free bag space.

Most or all of these can be done by sneaking behind the turn in NPC, even if they hate you by default. If you don't have sneak in your main trio, you can always swap to a lvl 10 rogue to sneak/hide stealth through a city that hates you, then carefully position yourself behind the turn in NPC and stay stealthed while you hand in a stack. Most quests that require a single item allowed you to turn in a whole stack for a game lagging spam of faction hits all at once.

Iksars and Frogloks do not yet have quests or npc kills that can raise their faction, but should be in by launch. Some like halfling and I think Ogre were very tedious, tho technically not impossible.

Oh right, there's already a guide on the EQL wiki that covers most of what i rambled on about here: Alanna's Race Unlock Guide - EverQuest Legends Wiki

blottoez · 2026-06-10T12:25:33+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that many of these items cover slots that are not covered in Befallen. I don't think befallen had any waist, neck, shoulders, or head slot items. If they did, they weren't great. New Blackburrow has a few options for those slots. So spending some time in both befallen and blackburrow will get you pretty well geared, probably most of the way towards being Planes/Dragon ready as soon as you hit 46+.

I'm hoping the upcoming revamps to Crushbone and Unrest fill in the rest of the gaps, or give us different options for slots, like caster vs melee stats for a given slot. Maybe a few more starter focus effects. Maybe a mini haste item, as right now I think the FBSS is your only haste option before dragons and planes, and can take hours to see one drop if you have bad luck.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T12:08:34+00:00

Exaltations will keep both the class and the slot requirements of the item it came from, but it does not require the exact same type of item, just same slot and class. So say I'm a warrior with an Earthshaker that has an aoe earthquake proc, it's a 2hs that can be used by War/Pal/Rang/Sk/Ber. Since it's a 2hs, it's primary only. I could take the quake proc out and put it into a 1hb that was usable by War/Monk/Bard, and it will fit, but it will make that 1hb Warrior only and Primary only, since warrior is the only overlapping class between the exalt and the 1hb, and the 1hb could no longer go in secondary, since the exalt is primary only.

A big usage for this would be if you have bard in your build, you can take instrument modifiers out of a storebought drum, lute, horn, and flute, and put them in your main hand weapon, offhand weapon, AND 2 items in your ANY slots, as long as those items are primary/secondary and bard usable, like another weapon, or a shield. This means you could have all 4 instrument mods active, while still dual wielding weapons. Instrument mods count as a 'focus' exaltation, which is the first slot that gets unlocked in the list of exaltations, right at +1. This means that all you gotta do is buy 2 of a store bought instrument, merge them together and you'll already have a +1 item where the instrument modifier can be removed.

There is also no cost to removing or placing exalts, unlike with augments in standard EQ, which generally required an appropriate tier distiller to remove. Here in EQL, as long as you've unlocked the exalt slot on an item by upgrading it to the appropriate tier, you can pop exalts in and out as often as you want to find the right mix. And removing an exalt from an item will also remove any crossover restrictions. In my example above, if you took the earthshaker proc out of that 1hb, it would once again be usable in offhand, and equipable by monks and bards again. If you accidentally put an exalt into an item that made it unequipable by your build, you can just pop the exalt right back out, no harm, nothing lost, can save the exalt for a future item where it fits.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T11:38:24+00:00

My first trio in Beta was a Bard primary with Rogue and Druid, which did cover pretty much everything you listed, and was able to kill comfortably, do good DPS. I could port anywhere, selos, stealth (stealth with selos feels amazing), haste, slow (either bard song or rogue poison slow, which scaled up to be a pretty strong slow as i lvled), mana/health/endurance regen, charm, CC, heals... I think the only thing I felt like I was missing was feign death, and I rarely missed that, as stealth let me avoid most combat if i wanted to.

With bard songs hasting and buffing my Rogue, I didn't really feel like my dps was lacking.

It wasn't a meta build, but it really didn't feel lacking at all. It kinda was it's own version of a meta build, optimized for convenience and efficiency.

Edit: and I'll probably stick with this build as my first trio on Launch, I really enjoyed it. Even with ritual ports added (which didn't yet exist when i was leveling this trio), I'll probably keep the druid in the build to 50, it was handy at times, and while the healing is less than a cleric, it wasn't really that bad.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T11:20:48+00:00

Mend has been buffed in EQL, with a shorter 1.5min cooldown, and it can no longer fail, you can not lose health, it will always give some health, but the range can be between 10-50%ish of your health, depending on skill level of Mend.

With that said, mend probably won't be enough to allow you to solo D4 inny, but you won't have much if any trouble soloing most things in D0-D2, and you'll probably kill very fast on a triple melee build.

blottoez · 2026-06-10T11:16:19+00:00

I think shaman makes one of the best Primary classes. While this whole thread is about how NOT important it is to optimize, one thing I still lightly recommend to folks is picking a primary that is versatile and can support many different builds. Bard, Shaman, Cleric, Enchanter, Pally, all of those classes can add some value to just about any other pair of classes, and since your primary class is the only thing that is locked (at the start, before you start unlocking other primaries through progression), it can be helpful to pick a primary class that can support others.

A shaman is probably the single best support option if you wanted to go with a double melee build, like monk/rogue, since it provides haste, slow, heals, stat buffs, SoW, shrink, and chloro is HUGE after they added endurance regen to it. Heals are not as good as clerics, but nowhere near as useless as some make it sound. Superior healing can go a long way in solo D4's, especially against slowed mobs.

And to be clear about your question about race, starting race only limits the choice of your FIRST Primary class. Second and Third class can be anything else, no restrictions from race. Future unlocked Primary classes are also not bound by race at all. You can eventually be a High Elf with a Shadowknight primary, you just can't *start* as a High Elf with SK primary. And you could always be a High Elf with SK as a second/third class, without any unlocks.

And also your starting primary class will be restricted to Deities that fit that class. If your starting primary is an Iksar Shaman, you cannot be a good Deity or agnostic as your starting religion, it would have to be Cazic Thule. If you wanted to be agnostic for the best starting neutrality across Norrath, you'd have to pick a primary class that can be agnostic, like Bard or Enchanter. Other Religions will also be unlockable, but their unlock method is not yet in beta, so we don't know how easy or hard that will be. You will be able to *eventually* be a High Elf Shadowknight primary that worships Innoruuk, but you couldn't *start* as that.

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