Grouping Guide

It is entirely possible for players in EverQuest to spend their entire careers going it alone, leveling from 1-60 without so much as speaking to another player. To experience the world of Norrath to its fullest potential, delving into the deepest dungeons and exploring the furthest untamed wilderness, the vast majority of players will team up with others along the way. EverQuest is, after all, a massively multiplayer online game.

This guide is intended to serve as an overview of the different kinds of groups you can form, from six-man dungeon crawling expeditions to power XP duos, as well as a general outline of EverQuest's different classes and their roles in groups.

Terminology

• OOM means Out of Mana
• FM means Full mana
• 30m means 30% mana left
• aggro means npc is going to change from moving/standing to attacking you.
• Train means NPC(s) are running in not normal behavior may aggro on you.

Groups

A single group in EverQuest can have up to six members. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish by teaming up, it might be easier, even necessary, to keep your group under this six-person cap.

Experience Bonus

Groups provide an experience bonus for every kill you make. The larger the group, the larger the bonus:

• 2-member group: 2% bonus
• 3-member group: 6% bonus
• 4-member group: 10% bonus
• 5-member group: 14% bonus
• 6-member group: 20% bonus

If the purpose of your group is grinding experience, you might see the 20% bonus of a full group and think you need to immediately snag the first five people in /who all lfg before you start. Unfortunately, the math doesn't quite work that way. Not counting the XP penalties and bonuses your groupmates add to the equation, here is the rate at which you have to kill the same mobs to equal your solo XP gains:

• 2-member group: 1.96x
• 3-member group: 2.83x
• 4-member group: 3.63x
• 5-member group: 4.39x
• 6-member group: 5x

A full group has to kill 5 mobs in the time it takes a solo player to kill one in order to get the same experience gain. Any full group can kill targets more quickly than even the most outrageously twinked solo character, but the problem lies in maintaining that pace. There aren't many places where a group can keep pulling mobs at that rate indefinitely; if nothing else, the group will run out of spawns to kill!

So what does this mean? Do you have to kick two or three friends from the grinding group you're barely paying attention to while reading this wiki, lest more progress in your precious yellow bar be squandered? Hardly. As I'll elaborate upon below, full groups can be safer, among other things. However, if your rate of raw experience gain is your single-minded purpose, you probably don't want to be in a full group.

Duos

A two-member group is typically referred to as a duo. Whether it's a regular adventure with your significant other or just a random stranger you teamed up with instead of fighting over spawns, duos are a fairly common group. With the right combination of classes they can be staggeringly effective, no matter what you're trying to accomplish.

Strengths

Almost any pair of players will have an easier time together than they will separately. Two classes that have little solo ability on their own can accomplish great things in a duo; a cleric and a warrior would be the most obvious example. Even if the players are the same class - two magicians, for instance - there is a great benefit to teaming up. A well-balanced pair of characters can, when played competently, accomplish perhaps 95% of what most full groups can.

Duos are probably the best group for pure experience rate. It's not difficult to double your kill rate with a pair of complementary characters: a good duo partner is one that removes the weakness(es) that prevent their teammate from killing that many mobs on their own. If a monk could heal themselves, or a rogue had a means to constantly backstab, very little would stand in their way as they depopulated entire zones. If a shaman had someone to tank while they cannibalized, or a necromancer a way to boost DPS without using their mana-intensive DoTs, the same holds true. The symmetry should be obvious.

Weaknesses

With even the best-matched pair of characters, they will be missing a potentially useful tool that they would like to have. Whether it's healing, snaring, spell interrupts, mana regen, or crowd control, something will be lacking from the two characters' repertoire that would make their jobs even easier. It may not stop them from accomplishing great things, but it won't make a shaman wish any less that his monk partner could channel his Quellious-trained tranquility into a cast of Clarity.

Depending on how ambitious their efforts are, a duo can have a razor-thin margin of error. A bad pull, a bad charm break, an unlucky add, or just a moment of inattentiveness on either players' part can lead to a nasty CR. And, it must be said, there are simply some things that even the most well-equipped, talented, and perfectly balanced pair of characters cannot accomplish that a larger group could waltz through with ease.

Roles

There are some typical roles that most players find them selves in.

Damage

Without doing damage to a mob it will not die.

Tank

Dedicated player to be getting hit.

Healer

Dedicated player to recover the health of the entire group/duo.

Support

This comes in many different flavors. The primary role is to help the group in other ways. Usually by increasing the effectiveness of your teammates or weakening the enemy (See Debuff Guide). Sometimes this is crowd control with stun, mez, root, or kiting. Sometimes this is mana regen. Sometimes this is buffing the players, or debuffing the enemy.