True solo spots

[Yesak]

It seems these forums have been flooded with boxing, so I'm going to pose a question that I havent heard for a while.

Where are the best solo spots these days?

I've heard SoF is soloing paradise, and I've found a few decent spots. However, I've started my final year of undergrad work and dont have nearly the same amount of playtime I had during the summer. So most nights I just want to log in for an hour or so, burn a few AAs with lesson and thats about it. I've been looking for a few new spots and I thought you guys might be able to offer me some suggestions.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I'd try Direwind GY. They are typically light blues, but fast killing = good AA xp. They don't run, so no runner problems. You will get two at a time, so I typically have muttly on /pet hold. Pull with slow, send in muttly when they position right. (they are casters so sometimes you have to wait for them) then VP the add back. Or some variation on that theme. They hit like girls, so you can get up close and cougar them down.

Watch for the undead golems, they spawn out of the heaps that the two dogfacemobs are hovering over.

Lots of cash drops, and the occasional rare spell makes it plat worthwhile too. (There are a couple of mage spells that sell well, and the mage spell Muzzle of Mowcha sells for a kings ransom.) Spawn time is reasonably fast. and there are about 6-7 pairs, as well as about 5-6 golems in the area.

Watch for the carrionmancer spawn. He is part of a quest, drops nothing, is D blue and can summon. Also a named golem spawns there but his drops are trash.

Now the truth is, I 2 box it, but it could easily be a solo spot as two pulls is what you should usually get, so long as you 'dance' around the path roaming golems.

[Yesak]

I might want to add that I'm lvl 80 with a mix of TSS raid gear and BB loot. I'd like something a little stronger than light blues, but thanks for the tip on the cash drops. My coffers are pretty low at the moment, might mess around there and see what it's like.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I am lvl 80 as well. I was doing this camp the last week or so specifically to get the muzzle of mowcha spell for my mage. I was surprised how quickly I was pulling in AAs there.

You can do TBS or SOF blues,slowly, root rotting, or you can shred these L blues, do more of them quicker and make some plat same time. I don't know how well geared you are, but if you can tank SOF mobs in teh face, then this might be a waste of time for you. I couldn't keep muttly alive while doing SOF mobs, had a hella time getting them solo, and really didn't find it worthwhile from a return on time perspective.

Another reasonably good spot is RSS, as it is a current hot zone. I don't find much in the way of cash drops there though, so it wasn't in my mind as worthwhile.

But your mileage may vary.

[Scalia]

Here are some zones that I have done lately for various combinations of fun, XP and cash:

RSS is currently very good AAXP if you can kill non-stop, but you'd probably need to at least duo there for it to be efficient. I don't have enough defensive AAs for soloing to be viable, but your mileage may vary. Mostly unexciting cash drops.

Infected Paw has a couple of areas where you can single pull easily (if you know what you are doing) and tank them with Cougar/DOTs, although Water elementals (Clerics) can be annoying. Lots of gems to sell and a fair amount of research stuff plus a couple of twink items off the named mobs (not the 4 mini-bosses for the Type 8 augment), worth up to a few K. Mostly light blues with occasional greens. Fairly mediocre AAXP, but a fun zone in my experience.

Sunderock is currently a hot zone, so you get an additional 260ish pp per session and the mobs are easily tankable light blues with some greens. Some named mobs are doable, but certain ones will swallow you whole in 3 seconds flat (Komodokin! ) Nothing special in terms of either XP or loot -- unless you need the new augment -- but it's peaceful and relaxing.

Tower of Solusek Ro has fun mobs which mostly come in twos. They are not rootable or snarable, but they are fully slowable and you should be able to tank two at a time easily. The loot consists of PoP era parchments and not much else aside from the ubiquitous Elaborate armor. Probably other PoP zones as well (level 69 Elite mobs in Tactics, perhaps?), but I haven't tried them at 80, so I don't know how efficient/doable it would be.

Daily quests in Dragonscale and Loping Plains if you need faction and/or Fenden's stuff. Even without fighting, you can get 50 Faycite and over 1 AAXP every 17ish hours, which is decent. Mass murder Minotaurs for the Brownie faction and OK XP.

TBS if you don't have the skeletal hand augment. I am about to start working on it again after a long break, so I don't know how good the XP would be at 80. However, most of the quest is supposed to be soloable and some camps are reportedly good XP.

[Unmei]

The suggestions in this thread confuse me deeply. So deeply, in fact, that I've re-read Yesak's post 4 times trying to find out if I missed some criteria somewhere that would cause people to suggest the direwind graveyard and RSS as solo spots for a level 80 shaman. I haven't found any.

So, that said, the best place I've found to solo on my shaman (Note: I haven't been looking all that hard. I rarely solo for XP anymore. I solo for other purposes and XP happens.) is in Loping Plains, towards the southwestern end of the zone, where all the orcs and worgs wander around. Pull them up snug onto the wall, and rot them down. With maxxed DoT AAs and decent foci, they go down pretty quickly and for good AA. I don't think any light blue spot would be able to compete, and, honestly, it's an easy arsed place to get singles.

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

[Scalia]

Well, as the OP wrote, "I've heard SoF is soloing paradise, and I've found a few decent spots", so I concentrated on non-SOF locations.

For what it's worth, I leveled from 77 to 80 (plus some AAs at 80) primarily by grouping/duoing the Worgs and RSS. They seemed to be quite similar XP-wise in a group/duo situation, although I am not sure how it would go solo. Worgs have about 5 levels on the RSS critters, but RSS is a hot zone atm, so it tends to average out.

In addition, the OP is also interested in cash drops and I don't think the Worgs drop anything particularly interesting aside from very occasional Rk. II spells, do they?

Finally, I find root/rotting boring, so I tend to look for tankable mobs when soloing, but that's just a character flaw

[Unmei]

[Bigcat Daddy-o]

I apologize for calling you an ass, Unmei. Whether you are or not, it is impolite of me to state that, and neither adds value or information to the discussion.

I also retract calling you and Brogh trolls. You both do provide meaningful information and data, which would not be the case if you were to fit in to the definition of troll. I let my temper get the better of me, and posted before thinking it through.

I stand by the bullying comments, and have no intention of tolerating same in the future. If I discern this behavior, with or without smiley faces (PS: I love the implied 'Smile when you say that pardner' useage of an old west saying), I will be calling you out on it.


Peace

[Yesak]

Aside from the shots at Unmie, she/he/it is MUCH MUCH closer to what I was looking for than the rest of you. I can solo light blues all day and thats not a whole lot of fun. I had pretty much given up on this thread and had almost given up soloing as a really lost art. I only came back to EQ a few months ago, so I dont know the new expansions very well at all, hence the question and need for advice. I added that I was lvl 80 with decent gear (BB, nothing spectacular) in hopes that ya'll would give me somethin stronger than light blues.

I have been soloing gators in LP and that has gotten boring, although its good xp. Spiders in Icefall and roots in DW are also favorites of mine. But again, been doin them for a while and am looking for something different.

RSS is cake and the xp solo isnt worth the effort in my book. I remember going to Tower of Sol Ro solo 5 years ago. No offense but that is rather laughable to suggest these days. I'm tempted to see about DW GY to see if the speed of killing would offset the light blue. I know nothing about the TBS skeletal hand quest, so thats also something i'm interested in seeing about. I was soloing Sunderrock BEFORE i took a 18 month break from EQ, so i wasnt excited about prospects of going back there. The Paw is interesting because I never really went back in there after the revamp. Might go check it out.

That being said, the place i'm actually interested in is the LP mobs Unmei suggested. I know he/she/it can be harsh but they rather accurately deduced what i wanted

[Macnair]

I like the camp in Loping Plains. The named mob is a moderately tough solo, unrootable and summoning, but all the other mobs there are easy. You can pull singles, root rot them, and move to the next with never an add. All dark blue, good aaxp. The other name in the camp, Lieutenant Kulthar, is also an easy pull, fully rootable, and drops nothing. The good loot is on the Shadowmane Champion.

I also like the spider camp in Icefall Glacier. If you pay attention to pathing, these are all single pulls, easy to root rot dark blues for good aaxp. Maybe one in 25 drops a TSS rank II spell. But I see you've been there already.

I am currently trying to learn the crypt cavern entrance in Hills of Shade, as I work my way through the Eron jewelry quest. The phoboplasms are blue or white cons, and the undead are yellow. Everything roots reliably, nothing summons, but the phoboplasms wander and all the mobs move fast. If I get a clean pull it usually goes ok, but I haven't got it solid yet. The mobs have a LOT more hp, it is hard to kill them in two minutes; I have had to reapply VP on most occasions, which cuts down on the speed of kills. But they yield a substantial amount of aaxp per kill, to make up for that. I am currently juggling my spell lineup to see if I can find a way to count on getting them dead in two minutes.

[Unmei]

I haven't found a good spot to solo in HoS yet. (As a shaman. Unmei can solo most places in HoS since he has fewer problems with multiples.). It's simply too difficult for her to get single pulls in most locations. At Borrowers, I can get wanderng crows, but not really any actual Borrowers. At mushrooms, I can again pick off a few roamers but they're annoying. Crypt I can get the first couple phoboplasms, but if I go in too deep I get a multi-pull of undead and get horribly maimed. I can solo ghosts, but they are mad crazy annoying. The only place I can reliably get more than a couple of singles is at the relatively heavily camped bone golem area by the gnomes, and, honestly, the golems have too many hitpoints for the XP they give (very marginally better than the Loping Plains orcs/worgs, and take significantly longer to kill.)

So if anyone has any good spots in HoS for XP soloing, I'd be curious to know.

[Yesak]

I've been able to solo the southern entrance to the crypt in HoS. The problem is that once i kill the ghoul and the 3 or 4 wandering plasms, I'm forced with the prospect of at least 2 inc on a pull. In 4 different attempts on that pull I have died twice. VP lands reliably but root on 2nd, not so much. Fully buffed I can get to almost 20k hp but the mobs often tear through that pretty quickly (even when slowed). For me its been a 50-50 shot if I can survive the prospects of being beat up, landing root and getting out of melee range before they crush me. Once the spawns are broken its a bit better, but you cant really take any breaks or else you get the 2 again and its another 50-50 shot of living or not.

[Isazo]

I spent quite a lot of time soloing steamworks in Fort. Mech -- if you use care with the pulls you can get reliably get one or two -- and the strategy I employ for doubles is pull one mob with Malis, immed switch target to other mob and VP, run back for a sec or so and root other mob (gems now refreshed).

The loot is similar to loping plains in terms of plat value to merchants. The quest drops for "Gearing Up" provide a tiny bit of XP from time to time, and Strike Force faction, if you haven't maxxed that. Since the steamworks give brownie rebels faction and the quest gives Ak Anon -- it's a nice place to work on both of them at once. Con range is DB to yellow, mostly DB. AAXP is reasonable. If you get a bad pull just jump off and take the cannon back up. I avoid the minotaurs.

Similar tactics can work at the gate camp of the Drangol fort in loping plains. The named that spawns in there is soloable at my gear level (TSS, little Solteris) -- but I'm always ready for a dog fight when I pull him. His gimpy AE will aggro the frog looking mobs if you aren't careful and that can be a problem or result in him getting killed by the frog(s) and you don't get his loot.

I've also tried HoS crypt and found it to be a good way to become dead. I'm sure some people out there have successful strategies for soloing it.

I've done a tiny bit of soloing in Beza, mobs without "Shock" do not summon in my experience, but with the mix of summoners and non-summoners, the pulls get difficult pretty fast.

[Scalia]

[Yesak]

Now we're getting somewhere with this thread! I had no idea you even *could* solo in Fort mech. I could use more brownie faction, but didnt want to go after the light blue minos in DSH for the 1 millionth time. I think I've tried the Dragnol camp in LP, but the frogs that I wasnt paying attention to added on me. That got annoying quick and gave up on that spot the 1st time. Might be worthwhile for me to try again? Named always hold interest to me. I was ADDICTED to soloing named in BB. I got just about everything i wanted from there plus 500k or so in sales (i rarely grouped in BB, always seemed a waste. Why group when I can solo for whatever I want and not have to share the loot?). Even if I dont get anything really worthwhile I love to solo badass named_X. Do all mobs in Zeka summon? I still need my document from there and it might be worthwhile for me to solo at the ent and wait for someone else doing it and just tag along. Just a thought. Anyway, keep the ideas coming!

[Veril]

HoS: you can pull treants and bushes directly south of the Valor camp solo. Easy kills, pull to valor camp, no adds.
HoS: N of valor camp are the birds, they come solo or in pairs, VP1, root other. Easy kills.
HoS: West wall, west of scorn, lots of singles or double pulls (just N of the raiding human force)
HoS: by the elite vendor (who sells masks) can pull singles from over the hill.

Loads of places to solo in HoS.

[Unmei]

[Scalia]

[sharringan]

SHIP near the succor spot is pretty decent for root / doting, around +- 20 % per kill, and loam drop chances from the gnomes, can be split via, VP, go to the down ledge and zone out / in right off and find a mob single, or you can use a wizard twink to decess yourself each time for that :p ( make sure you get the illusion from the quest Disrupt the workshop before going there, helps greatly in case of afk's or such )

[HawklordXegony]

They changed the succor spot to the zone-in (finally).

[Sustenon]

Yo Yesak long time no see! Glad to see you coming back. I have been doing the worgs/wereorcs in LP for a couple of levels and they are decent xp and dark blue still, but they have the bonus of being part of a quest for fangbreakers faction from a guy right around the corner. There are some decent solo spots in HoS, just gotta be ready for 2 most times Good luck bro!

[Bulce]

I solo'd most of the time in LP, down near the ship area. Combined with the "kill" tasks offered, it was decent XP + Fangbreaker faction.
As far as HoS goes, I was able to rot the Rampaging boneguards and feral frighteners easily. These were up near the Bertox camp. There is also a task you can get there to boost the Xp a bit - can't recall who gives it, but it requires killing 3 boneguards, and gives XP + faction.
The boneguards do not summon, and with an Extended Range focus, you can be out of their spell range, which is an annoying stun + dmg.
I also poked around with the ravens in the zone, but wasn't impressed.

Currently, I solo in Beza or Zeka, picking off singles at the port in. I haven't messed with the SoD zones yet.

[zantocon]

There are some really good spots in Steamfactory to solo. Just have to be careful pulling, having a root clicky is handy. Maxed VP recommended. If your careful and pick the right area you can get enough solos to keep you happy for several hours. If you wanna get some people to join your group, beza instances are really good things to solo. Just stay away from the two mobs that summon. Steamwork shocktroopers is one of them. The other is a shockreaver I think, doesn't summon till it's at 41% (vs the shocktrooper that summons at 90%ish). The building can be pulled mostly solo or two at a time as well if you wanna spend more time, I usually pull the outside, and avoid the steamworks there at the front, then when I'm out of mobs around the building, leave, drop task and get a new one.

[Cven]

My favorite spot to solo is beza instance. As Zantocon said avoid the mobs with "shock" in them. Dont bother going inside just get a new task. I have also solo'd some in old commanlands. Its not great xp, but you can work on some of the new tasks/faction, plus i was able to pick up some rk2 spells.