Character Development

EQ2 offers you numerous ways to develop your character. There's much more to the game than just gaining levels. We've already touched on some of them, such as Collections and Questing. Let's go over them in a little more detail.

Experience
The most obvious way to develop your character is to earn levels in his class. You gain levels by filling your experience bar with experience points. There are several ways to earn experience points in EQ2:
 * By killing a non-trivial creature
 * By exploring a new location for the first time
 * By completing a quest

Tradeskill Experience
In the previous section, we described adventure experience. There is also tradeskill experience. Your character has a second experience bar for tradeskill experience, which earns levels in his tradeskill. You can see this second experience bar in your Persona Window (press [P] to open it).

You earn tradeskill experience by crafting items. See the Taking Up a Tradeskill section below for details.

Achievement Experience
Starting at level 10, you'll earn a third type of experience: achievement experience. At this point, you'll have three experience bars. You can see your Achievement Experience bar in your Skills Window (press [L] to open it). This experience bar goes toward earning Achievement Points. See the Achievements section below for details.

Vitality
When your character is well-rested, he earns twice as many experience points from every victory in combat. (There is also tradeskill vitality, which affects experience from crafting items.)

Each time you get double experience from vitality, you consume a bit of it. If you play for long periods of time, you may run out of vitality. How do you regain vitality that you've "burned"? Simple - it regenerates about 1% every hour, whether you're logged on or not. It takes about 1 week of real time to accumulate 100% vitality (if you started with none).

There's a little yellow arrow on your experience bar, which shows you the point on the bar at which your vitality will run out. If you have lots of vitality, then the arrow is probably at the end of the XP bar. Point your mouse at this arrow to see a tooltip about your vitality.

Debt
When you die, you incur experience debt. This debt shows up on your screen as a small amount of red on your XP bar. While you have debt, your combat victories will only give you half as much experience as usual. Debt will evaporate over a period of hours if you were to wait, but you can repay it immediately by killing a handful of monsters.

Achievements

 * Main Articles: Achievement Experience, Achievement Abilities

Achievements are the principle way of customizing your character. You'll begin earning Achievement Experience at level 10. Each time you fill up your Achievement Experience bar, you'll earn a point. You'll spend these points to learn special abilities and powers that allow you to speialize your character. These abilities are often called "AAs".

You earn Achievement Experience by completing quests, defeating notorious enemies, acquiring rare treasure, and exploring dangerous places. After you reach the maximum level of 80, all of the adventure experience that you earn will be converted into Achievement Experience as well.

Achievement Abilities are very significant to the performance and play style of your character. Many players are strongly motivated to do activities that earn Achievement Experience. If you spend a lot of your time questing, you'll typically earn close to one Achievement Point per level.

Your Achievement Trees
Press L, or choose Achievements from the EQII Menu, to open the Achievements window. The first tab, called "Character Development", is where your Racial Traditions are listed; these are described later in this guide. The second and third tabs contain your Achievement trees. Here you can browse the Achievement Abilities and spend the points that you earn.

You have two Achievement Trees that you can spend points on: a "General" tree, and a "Class" tree. The "General" tree typically grants new abilities and enhances your attributes, while the "Class" tree typically enhances your spells and combat arts. Most classes get better benefits from spending points in their "General" tree first, and leaving their "Class" tree until later.

Spending Achievement Points
Each time you earn a new Achievement Point, just click on an available Achievement Ability in the tree to learn it (or to improve an existing one). If it's an activated ability, then you'll get a new icon in your Knowledge Book, on the Abilities page. Drag this new icon to your hotkey bar, then try it out!

The Achievement Trees show you the order of prerequisites for each ability. You must start at the top of the tree and 'buy' your way down the tree. When you've spent enough points on one ability, the next ability in the 'tree branch' will be unlocked. It takes about 20 points to unlock the best ability at the end of each 'branch'.

Remember, you'll get to spend a maximum of 100 points (50 points per tree) before level 70, and 140 points (70 per tree) after level 70.

Changing your Mind
Your choices of Achievement Abilities are only semi-permanent. In your home city, you can visit an Achievement Counsel NPC to reset your entire Achievement tree and spend your points differently. The first few respecs are free; after that, they will cost money. The cost increases each time you respec, but the cost resets after each 30 days.

Racial Traditions

 * Main Article: Traditions

Every race in EQ2 gets two special Innate Abilities, and also gets to choose from a list of ten Racial Traditions. You get to choose one Racial Tradition every 10 levels until level 80.

You can view and select your Racial Traditions on the first tab of the Achievements window (press L or select it from the EQII Menu). The Racial Traditions system is fairly well described in the window itself in-game.

Taking Up a Tradeskill

 * Main Articles: Tradeskilling and Tradeskill Timeline


 * Overview of mechanics
 * Recipes and work orders
 * Getting started

Further Development
For more ways to develop your character, see the More Ideas Guide.