u/Paradoxmoose

From Brasse on the EQL discord- it looks like they're announcing something unrevealed, and are under a embargo on revealing it to a wider audience until the company they gave the exclusive to reveals it themselves:

>I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up that we will not be able to post any info from the panel until after an exclusive feature created by a major media outlet goes live.
I do not know when that will be, but hopefully there will be a player or two in the audience who will forward info and maybe photos that they take and post here.
We plan to have a Video of the panel (gods and tech allowing), but it will need to be formatted and such, so that will be next week some time when our Creative Services team releases it.

and

>Yeah, I am not sure I even have permission to state the media outlet name. Hopefully the Rangers in the audience will get the scouting report back to you. Hopefully no deities with DT there, heheheh.

Someone in chat chimed in-

>no worries we have cameras there live streaming from sources

and when asked which stream they replied

>Not until we get closer to the panel, sometimes they try to shut cameras out and we have to use other methods so it changes a bit

If I find a stream that is hosting the panel, I'll share it here. If someone else finds a stream, please share it here as well.

Update- still looking. Nothing coming up on Twitch or YouTube. At this point, 25% of the way through the hour, I expect we'll have to wait to get photos of the panel and written summaries from any community members who attended. Or, at worst, wait for the third party post and official (edited) video.

Update 2- someone from the panel was posting in the discord. I posted a reply below with their quotes.

1. The 'best' endgame bossing builds may not be the most fun to level fresh as a starter build.
2. You get a lot of higher level motes and AAs by leveling planar geared twinks killing yellow/red named mobs on D4.
3. You can only level each class once from 10-50. In combination with (2), this means that it may be to your benefit to level additional classes one at a time, rather than in groups of 2 or 3 after the first 3.
4. 'Locking in' your build and not changing it will dramatically reduce how much there is to do in EQL- there are no alts (unless you play on a different server entirely). Your first build doesn't need to be perfect.
5. If you have enough gear, AAs, spell levels- you don't *need* tank/slow/heals/pacify/etc to do d4 solo. They help *a lot*, obviously.
6. Most builds can do D4 raids solo. How much gear, AAs, and spell levels it will take will vary. D4 Inny has been soloed with PAL/CLR/(no third class) in beta1 and a fresh 50 RNG/MAG/ENC hardcore (no deaths) solo self found character (charm carried) was done in beta2. I have been told, but not seen, pure melee builds have done D4 Inny solo as well.
7. Many of the websites for EQL builds are vibecoded AI slop that haven't been reviewed and contain inaccurate information. The build tier lists/rankings/scores are especially askew.
8. It is easy to start with Ogre/Froglok/Iksar/Troll unlocked, it is difficult (impossible without the store token in some cases?) to currently unlock them in game. There are guides out there on how to start as an Ogre (or any race) and unlock human/wood elf/half elf/dark elf that will give you access to most primary classes as a race that cannot normally start as that race.

We have had a series of accounts posting illustrations created by other fantasy artists in this subreddit, pretending they were the creator, and seeking "commissions". We ban them as we see them, but they keep obtaining accounts to post again. Many of these accounts appear to be compromised accounts that hadn't posted recently.

Clients- please be sure to check that the account posting on this subreddit has the "Certified Artist", "Fellowship Artist" or "Moderator" flair before sending them anything. We took the time and effort to verify these accounts belong to professional artists.

I am seeing a lot of people ask questions akin to "would this build work?" going in to the preorder beta.

PLAY IT NOW

The most important take away is that if there's something you think is cool and would ask people how it is- play it in this upcoming beta. If it doesn't pan out, you can give feedback to the devs. They don't seem to want to have everyone playing combinations of only 6 of the classes. So if Druids are your favorite, and you're scared that their healing won't be good enough- if it turns out it isn't, you'll find out in beta and be able to give feedback.

BIG CHANGES APPEAR ON THE HORIZON

Next, a big issue going in to the next beta is that we don't have any idea of how spell leveling is actually going to work out in practice. It could be that spell leveling is enough to make Mage the best class in the game, or it could simply amount to maintaining the status quo. We cannot know in advance. So any advice you get from anyone will be in the context of the prior beta, and it could end up outdated rather quickly.

EVERYTHING IS A SPECTRUM

Another issue is that I have noticed people who haven't played already have very binary thinking in regard to "will this work or not"? Every build, even the 'good' ones are on different power levels, and just about every build can clear all content. Each build will take different amounts of gearing before it can do d0 Naggy solo, d0 Vox solo, d0 CT solo, etc. Some builds may never be capable of soloing d3 CT or d3 Inny with any amount of gear, but there is no well defined list on what those are.

THE CURRENT BUILDING BLOCKS

Currently, some classes are powerhouses that can carry many builds, so when I am planning a build, I start with them and then move out from there. PAL/SK/WAR are potent tanks, SHM/CLR are the most potent healers. If you wanted to go with a 'sure thing' picking one of the tanks from there, one of the healers from there, and adding in whatever third class you want, and you'll have a worry free run of whether you can do d4 solo Inny. ThisIsHowIPaladin did d4 inny solo with just PAL/CLR, not even using a third class.

PAL and SK are very similar, having the new abilities SMITE and REAVE, respectively. Smite does damage and lowers the cooldown of Lay on Hands, while Reave does damage and lowers the cooldown on Harm Touch. Currently most people consider PAL to be stronger as having a free complete heal every 5 minutes is more valuable than a free nuke every 5 minutes.

WAR is still good, but not generally considered to be as good as PAL/SK. They do have higher skill caps, access to dual wield, and cleave.

SHM is a cult favorite for their buffs and slows. Their heals currently aren't great, but if you land a slow, that makes healing easier to handle with bad heals.

CLR has the updated complete heal, which has a short cast time and then heals to full after a ~12 second delay. It's very potent. CLR buffs are also good.

AND THEN...?

Most of the remaining classes will always work well as a third class.

BRD is one of the most potent third classes, offering a little bit of everything. It's basically never a bad choice, and that's the reason many people are going to use it as their primary class, so they can swap out the tank/healers and always have the bard as their third. They also have track, which is awesome in EQL. The only downside of note for bards is that they're a spell slot hog, 5 slots for passive songs, 3 or 4 slots of melodies. With AAs you can have up to 14 spell slots, which mitigates the problem.

BER will ramp up any build by berserker stance doubling the attack speed and cutting the cooldown of attack skills in half. The downside is that zerker stance competes with defensive/evasive stance, meaning that if you need to use those stances to survive a difficult raid boss, zerker will add very little, if anything, to the fight.

MNK gives mend for a free short cooldown heal, and passive additional attacks that you don't have to think about- FD mostly stinks on EQL, though, with splitting being difficult.

ROG has some cool poisons and backstab from the front. Their stealth is the best in the game and gives them an escape and the best skip.

WIZ if you want to nuke or add a big nuke to spellblade

ENC gives charm, haste, and CC- CC is of less use in EQL, generally most groups I was in just would offtank the adds. But if you are doing PoSky solo, Noble, spirocs and bees will be much easier with CC. They are among the least 'finished' classes in EQL at the moment. They only have 1 Class AA for improved mana regen, which isn't amazing. I look forward to seeing what they have planned.

RNG has strike through to bypass dodge/block/reposite, etc. They also have track, which is awesome in EQL.

BST is arguably in the worst spot of all melee/hybrids, but it does at least have a slow. Their pet currently isn't anywhere near as good as you would have imagined it being.

MAG is basically at the mercy of however they decide to handle pets in EQL.

DRU is arguably the least potent healer in EQL at the moment, but it does have DS that helps in leveling, and they have track, which is awesome in EQL. They have an AA that gives additional crit chance of all spells, any spell from any class in their combo.

NEC gives a passive lifetap proc that will be useful in melee builds, lifetaps, and then good dots that you can periodically cast for extra damage.

TAKE AWAY

But again, I am going to circle back to the first sections- the upcoming beta is going to be short lived. Picking a comp that you wanted to play but turns out to be 'not good' will have no long term negative consequences. It will give you a worthwhile perspective to share with the devs. And it will also let you see first hand how spell levels being added will impact the build that you wanted to play.

My personal plan for the July beta is going to be trying a build without a tank and not focusing on melee damage. Whether that's ENC/DRU/WIZ for nukes or NEC/SHM/BRD for dots, I haven't decided yet.

I've seen a lot of questions on streams and in threads about picking a primary class- and after playing the beta, I changed how I think about primary classes. So I figured my thought process would be helpful to share.

I'm a data scientist, so I am looking more at the numbers and using them to assist in making decisions and help reduce the total grind required to unlock classes. If you want to think about things differently, or just go with your gut, that's valid.

By now most people know -

Only your first primary class has to be tied to your starting race. So if you are an Ogre, your first primary class (which will be locked in at level 11) has to be one that is available for Ogre- BL/BER/SK/SHM/WAR. That's it.

Your 2nd and 3rd classes can be any of the other classes. Those 2nd and 3rd classes can be changed around at will in new loadouts, but you will be de-leveled to the lowest level of the classes you swap to (which will be level 10 for the first time you swap classes)

Your primary class does not contribute more 'power' than if it were your 2nd or 3rd class in any way. It doesn't matter if you are MAG/NEC/ENC, NEC/MAG/ENC, ENC/MAG/NEC, or etc. They're functionally the same, aside from deity and race considerations of the primary class.

You will get a wildcard class unlock token the first time your character hits level 50.

After that, you can unlock classes by completing all of the respective quests for a given class in PoSky. Every class has at least 1 PoSky quest requiring a drop from Eye of Veeshan.

What some people may not know-

Your starting race is locked in at character creation. If you reach level 10 and decide you want to have BRD as your primary, but you are an Ogre- you will need to either reroll or do faction quests to unlock a race that can be a BRD.

PoSky will have a personal instance available, meaning that you can farm it in instances up to twice per hour. Personal instances can also last up to 3 hours. This is not a 7 day raid lockout that many people were concerned may end up being the case.

Mage and Shadow Knight are the only classes that require 2 different drops from Eye of Veeshan. This may make them among the last classes that you complete all of the quests for. Most classes require 7 to 9 item drops (not including runes) to unlock as a primary. Druid and Mage requires 10 item drops (not including sky runes) to drop for their quests in total, which again may make them among the last that you complete. PAL only requires 6 drops.

With PoSky drops being inconsistent, by the time you complete any of the class quests (other than maybe PAL, which could be done long before the rest), you're close to completing most of the class quests. That is assuming you have been keeping the drops and not deleting the ones you don't care about, of course.

On a recent stream, Secrets said something to the effect of "EoV's drops have been made more fair than back-of-the-napkin math may indicate" - but we don't have any more information on this. The back-of-the-napkin math that she is referring to is it requiring approximately 120 EoV kills to be likely to receive one of each class quest drop. But so far, my experience has been still getting many repeat drops from Eye, and others in my group saying "Damn, got (class) gem again."

Spiroc Lord, Keeper of Secrets, and Sister are no longer chain spawnable.

They have added "wind runes" to the PoSky quests, if you were to want to unlock every class, you would need 6 or 7 of each rune, respectively.

My suggestions-

Do not toss the wind runes away when you think you are done! Especially if you plan on upgrading the weapon or haste belt by repeating the quest and merging the rewards (after upgrading them with motes). At the very least, look up which runes are for the weapons/belts/etc that you care about, and keep those runes in case you get lucky and get the drop for another weapon/belt.

You may not be able to clear Sky on a new character within 3 hours, but I would recommend getting in as many Eye and Efreeti kills as possible, as these may end up being the bottlenecks for many of your class unlocks.

While most players in Reddit/Discord talk about soloing everything, so far in beta it has been far more common to group than solo. Solo is a great challenge, but from what I have seen throughout is that grouping is just more rewarding over the course of a play session, and far easier. While most groups will take all comers, the only issue I have seen arise is too few players being willing/able to contribute to healing. Just keep an eye out for that and talk to your group if it comes up.

Clear your bank/inv/dragon's hoard before farming Sky. Once you start farming in Sky, it will start to clog up your inventory, bank, and dragon's hoard. This limits how much gear you can farm/store from other planes. Thus it would be optimal to continue focusing on Sky until you have unlocked/obtained what you want to from there, and then being done with it. While they have reduced the number of quest items required per quest, the number of quest items overall is still 128 drops- not including wind runes (which is 15 stacks of runes). I made this template from the EQL wiki in order to let me track my drops and delete the classes that I don't want to consider/track. You can make a copy of it if you wish, or make your own once everything is set in stone at launch.

Don't forget to move your motes to your 'alternative currencies' inventory to save space!

My plan-

Personally I am currently planning to have SK as my first primary class. As it is one that requires more quests and Eye drops to unlock via Sky, is one that I am fairly certain that I will want in many combos, and it is available as an Ogre. Ogres have my preferred starting stat block, and frontal stun immunity. And it doesn't hurt that their starting city is close to PoF, which means I can set my bind to somewhere like Neriak for Gate, and still use Origin to quickly reach Fear.

I will be holding on to my level 50 wildcard primary class unlock token in case I get exceptionally unlucky with a class that I wanted to unlock from Sky.

While PAL is a class I will want to play, it currently only has 4 quests to complete to unlock it, and 6 total drops, the fewest of any class in both respects. Side rant- 3 of their 4 quests are for weapons, too! 2 of them are 1h primary swords, so you can only ever attack with one of them at a time.

https://preview.redd.it/t57fjg2ncp8h1.png?width=637&format=png&auto=webp&s=13976038d91d78adfe224399da474e1db9f7873b

If they add in additional requirements, such as completing the Fiery Avenger quest (which I could swear I thought I saw was a requirement at some point in time), I may reconsider.

Final thoughts -

Generally speaking, most builds are 'viable'. as in they can clear d0 raid content solo. This is not to say that all builds are equally capable. Some builds will require more gear grinding than others to be able to solo d0 Inny or Cazic Thule. If you don't care about character power levels, and are dead set on playing a combo you think is neat, do it. This world is run by overwhelmingly awful people, and you need to do what you need to find ways to enjoy yourself despite that. If you are a RNG corpse at heart, and you know you will be a RNG corpse in every build til the day you die permanently, pick that RNG corpse as your first primary.

But if you do care about player power, currently you'll find the most players including some combination of CLR/SK/PAL/BRD/WAR/SHM, with some MNK/WIZ/NEC/ENC, and fairly few DRU/RNG/ROG/BST/MAG. As a result, most of the first cluster of classes will be a good fit in a large number of builds very well, and probably still will come July 28th.

It may be worth pointing out that unlocking additional primaries isn't strictly required to play EQL and complete all the content. If I were to just have SK and either BRD or CLR as my primaries, I could make most of the builds that I currently want to play.

If all of this sounds overwhelming, it's totally valid to either never go to PoSky, or just go there to complete a quest for a specific target piece of gear or two, and then never return. After spending well over 60 hours in PoSky and not getting any of the things I went there for- I won't be doing *any* PoSky in beta2. Maybe by the time the game launches, I'll not still be burned out and jaded from my experience there in beta1. I encourage people to not burn out on PoSky in beta2 next month, your character there will be very short lived, but how annoyed you are by the zone may not be.

The devs are still doing balance passes. On a stream a few weeks ago, Moth said something to the effect of "we want to get other classes up to where Knights are. With buffing rather than the other way". Further, we haven't even seen what the recently announced spell leveling will be. So it could very well end up that some caster classes that are currently less utilized end up being very very strong, and worth a stronger consideration for unlocking. We'll find out more as they start to implement spell leveling in beta2.

Hopefully something in here was informative/useful for helping you plan your EQL play time.

Edit- Also, they did mention on stream that there will be another way to unlock primary classes. They have not given any further details on that as far as I am aware.

First- If you are not working from a reference, and you reach this point, it's a signal that you may need to spend more time/effort studying and practicing.

This post was originally a reply to a post that was trying to do a traditional portrait and was looking for feedback, but it largely applies to digital efforts as well. That post was deleted, but it's something that comes up so often that I figured it was worth posting for others to see.

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Here's a few ways to objectively compare the face in the ref to the face in the sketch

1- Take a digital photo of the ref for yourself (if you don't already have a digital copy of it), straight on to not get any perspective distortion. Put it into photoshop or any free image editing software, or any free online image editing tool (I think pixlr is the one I used a couple decades ago).

Bring your photo of your sketch as a new layer.

Resize one of the images to match the other, it can help to lower the opacity of the top layer, or set it to overlay, something so you can see both. Make sure to hold down the shift key to keep the x and y axis consistent/proportional. Align one key marker, such as one of the two eyes, to be the same size.

This will show both small scale things, like how much more open these eyes are than the eyes as they exist in this photo, and as well as any other overall proportion issues.

2- Literally bring out some tracing paper and trace the key markers off of the face, including his eyelids. And then move that tracing paper over to your drawing. I suspect their scales are slightly off (which is fine) but you should still be able to see how much more open your sketch's eyes are than the reference.

3- Flip them both upside down. Part of the problem is you are pulling from your experience drawing all the prior faces, and jumping to conclusions with this one. When you flip everything upside down, it is more more abstract. You have a better chance at objectively observing shapes/forms/values/hues/etc if you stop thinking about it as a face.

4- A grid. Measure out half an inch on both your ref and a canvas (you'd probably want to start fresh with this, and probably use a copy of the ref in case the grid obscures anything) and then draw the grid on both. This will let you copy 1 to 1 by going square by square and noting where the edges of key features are, what angles they are in the context of the square that they're in, etc. This method, similar to the above, is more abstract and will let you see what is actually there, rather than autocompleting what you think is there because it's a face. The hope with either of them is that you can train your eye to see these things eventually with the face straight on, rightside up, without a grid, eventually.