EverQuest 2 Game Update Blog

Raid Packing List

Raid mobs have always had a variety of devastating poisons, noxious effects, arcane curses, stuns, stifles, and knockbacks at their disposal to make it a challenge (or darn near impossible) for the raid force to defeat them.

Discovering the strategies required to kill these raid targets is a key part of raiding. Raid mobs tend to have elaborate scripts, puzzles, or strategies required to defeat them. Solutions that work for one guild may not be appropriate for another due to the players and classes present in the raid. One raid force may have a lot of dirges and troubadours, another may have more enchanters (illusionists and coercers). Understanding each group member’s role and capabilities is the job of the raid force leader.

In a raid situation, it is very often that the healers (even if there are 6 or 7 of them) have their hands completely full keeping up the Main Tank and Main Assist (off-tank) or even a third tank alive, as well as keeping themselves up.

It is not uncommon for raid mobs to summon assistance in the form of friends who go after the most vulnerable raid members (mages/wizards) or the ones who can afford least to be “occupied” or stifled from casting (healers).

In short, you cannot count on the main tank and healers to keep all detrimental effects (poisons, arcane curses, etc.) off of you, nor can you depend upon them to deal with all “adds” or additional enemies which appear.

For certain fights, your raid leader will explain the strategies and what to expect.

Here’s the summary:

1. Food/Drink

2. Ammo
3. Cures
4. Status Items
5. Miracles/Blessings
6. Repair Kits/Mender Bots
7. Spare Equipment

Food/Drink
This may seem obvious, but inevitably a few folks show up to a raid with no food or drink. It is strongly advised that you bring the appropriate food/drink for your class. There are special infusions which are very high quality food/drink designed for raiding. Refer to your local Provisioner or the Broker.

Ammo
This one seems obvious, but every ranger at least once has showed up to a raid with few or no arrows and had to beg, borrow, or steal to get the needed ammo. Throwing stars, daggers, and axes go fast! Get a Quiver or Bandolier with at least 16 slots. It is not uncommon to go through over 1,000 items in a 4 hour raid.

Cures
It is expected that you bring these items unless you are capable of curing/healing all of these effects yourself:

• Freedom of Mind (can be mastercrafted or handcrafted)

• Dedicated Arcane Remedy
• Dedicated Noxious Remedy
• Dedicated Elemental Remedy
• Dedicated Trauma Remedy

Freedom of Mind can be crucial, as it allows you to shake off stun/stifle effects which prevent you from moving or casting. Unfortunately it can only be cast every 10 minutes, but it can mean the difference between life and death.

The other cures can be cast much more frequently.

Relics & Signets (purchased with Status)
Relics and Signets are items purchased with status from City Status Merchants in your home city (Qeynos Harbor for example) which give you a “Hail Mary” type of last ditch effect in battles. There are heals, mana boosts, and various cures, as well as large damage items for certan races. Unfortunately these items have long cast times, are LORE (so you can only carry one of each), and are rather expensive.

Miracles/Blessings
Consider those Status Items an alternative to the Miracles and Blessings offered by deities. If you are a worshipper of a deity that offers defensive or protective effects for you or your group, consider bringing them to the next raid. If you are a scout, then increased dps (or reduced hate) items are what is typically available, so investigate those.

Repair Kits/Tinkered Mender Bots
As a guild, when we start working our way into more challenging raid zones, it would be unrealistic to expect that we’ll tackle and defeat each zone and each boss without dying at least once. The first raid forces who tackled the toughest raid zones in Kunark died dozens of times a night until they learned the strategies and/or acquired the necessary gear to accomplish these goals.

Don’t get discouraged if your group or the raid force struggle with a certain boss or zone and die repeatedly. Something can be learned from each defeat, even if only this is discovering what detrimental effects are placed upon us by the enemy and trying different strategies to mitigate the worst of those effects.

The bread and butter of keeping your armor in working order during a raid has always been the Repair Kit. These are upgraded to 50% repair kits in Kunark. For ~20g these woodworker-made items will repair your armor from 0-40% back up to 50%.

If you are a gifted tinkerer (level 350 or higher), you probably already have a Mender Bot — known to gnomes everywhere as the Mechanized Platinum Repository of Reconstruction — in your inventory. This miraculous item costs roughly 10 plat for a tinkerer to make, but no additional cost to summon or use it. It can be called once per hour, once per zone (the owner can zone out and zone back in if the zone is persistent and nobody else has a bot available).

Using a mender bot is NOT CHEAP. Repair costs are typically twice the cost of mending in the guild hall or your home city. If it is important to your class that your armor be in tip-top shape before each battle, then you’ll want to bring extra money for mending. Otherwise, you may choose to get along with repair kits.

On a side note, certain raid mobs (and even some group mobs in The Shadow Odyssey) are capable of breaking your equipment independant of the number of times you may have died.

Spare Equipment
A more economical solution to the repair situation is to bring a second set of armor and weapons. Certain raid zones and/or certain raid mobs have special attacks which can be heat, cold, divine, arcane, or poison-based. It can be very helpful to bring spare equipment especially if it has high resists.

For instance if your normal gear has a very low divine resist of 1,000 (as the TSO Void Shard gear seems to) and we are going into a zone with a lot of divine-based damage, you may need to switch to equipment with high divine resists just to survive the battles. If you lack these items, Jewelers can make “resist” jewelry which is carried around specifically for these situations. In short, it doesn’t matter how much damage you can put out if you get whacked every time these effects trigger.

Offensive/DPS/Defensive Armor
Tanks in will typically bring 2-3 different sets of armor to a raid.

Offensive/DPS gear which puts out more damage at the expense of defense. The opposite sould be self explanatory. Tanks may be asked to switch out their gear and/or buffs to be in an offensive or defensive stance as needed during the fight.