Newbie armor
by paul on Dec.22, 2006, under Equipment
Way back when Everquest started, your first armor was either dropped, or made with tradeskills – banded armor, silk, or made from ruined cat (or bear) hides. As you levelled, there were certain items that were known to be good for your class, until eventually you ended up gearing from raids.
When Luclin was released, the new class, beastlord, had a set of quested (non-tradeskill) armor, but they were the only ones. Other Vah Shir had the quested Ghulam set, and some rewards (weapons) from tradeskill quests.
Then, some time later, after Luclin had been out a while, and starting before Planes of Power, most races and classes were given what has become known as newbie armor quests. These faked the involvement of trade skills, and so most of the quests were written up on EQTraders. But EQTraders eventually decided that these weren’t really tradeskills, and so stopped updating them. Plus some races didn’t have any of these quests (Vah Shir), and new classes for a race didn’t always have them – frogloks, after the move to Rathe Mountains, in particular.
So far, the exceptions are all beastlords, which only had their Luclin quests, and all Vah Shir, apart from berserkers.
There were some high level tradeskills for cultural armor, and a few minor variations like the plate armor made for the Coldain quests – all of which required expensive ingredients and high tradeskills, plus were markedly inferior to equivalent level raid drops (despite being a lot harder to get).
Planes of Power introduced some items that can be quested with tradeable drops in Plane of Knowledge (mask, ring), and the 50+ ornate semi-tradeskill quests, which all involve tradeable components. Again, markedly inferior to drops, even single group drops this time. See EQTraders again for all of this.
Another significant change in PoP was the introduction of recommended and required levels on items.
For lower levels, this was all sad, as mudflation was degrading what was possible for them to reach, and gradually removing all incentive to remain low level even for a short while.
After this, both Lost Dungeons of Norrath (LDoN) and Dragons of Norrath ( DoN) introduced a system of buying items with points earned in group dungeons; the DoN system used crystals that are tradeable in the Bazaar.
The next major change was with Dragons of Norrath. New, lower level, cultural/tradeskills armor was released; see EQTraders. Unfortunately, they only give a general quest outline, and don’t give links to the items themselves, unlike their earlier write ups. Search on Allakhazam for “Journeyman’s” items to find the lowest level DoN culturals. Even the new Drakkin items are listed on EQTraders under DoN, but you should be able to find them (if only in the Bazaar) as crystalweave, crystalskin, crystalwing and crystalscale. EQTraders has the Drakkin recipes under Recipes->Cultural->Drakkin. Required level to use the armor is 15, recommended 20. Skill level to make it is 115 to 139 (for tailoring, anyway); the crystalwing sewing kit and needle need 162 and 132 smithing.
The DoN cultural armors take three augment slots, and special reusable augments can be crafted with either smithing or tailoring for them.
At the same time ( DoN) some items were added as quest/task rewards from PoK; these involve items not covered by the standard newbie quest armor. NPCs involved are: V’Lynn Renloe, Castlen Drewe, and Barrenzin. The good (V’lynn) and evil (Barrenzin) NPCs give you items from your newbie quest armor; the neutral guy (Castlen, next to the soulbinder) gives you the additional items mentioned above. These quests come roughly one per level between 10 and 20.
Finally, The Serpent’s Spine introduced some new quested armors, for all levels. You need to search on “Kimem Saydel” to track these down. Levels for these are 20+; the components can be bought in the Bazaar, and the level 20 items drop in Blightfire.
