Skip to Content

Everquest 2 Leveling Guide 1-125

Welcome to our Everquest 2 Leveling Guide!

This guide has been updated in 2022 and is up to date with Visions of Vetrovia and the new 125 level cap!

If you need to learn more about your class, see our Class Guides for builds and info.

Leveling up in Everquest 2 is very quick these days compared to before, but if you are a new player I recommend that you don’t rush it.

There are many different ways of leveling in Everquest 2 including questing, farming, dungeons, collecting, and even exploring for XP. Not all of them are as efficient but all of them can be fun and rewarding, pick the style of leveling that suits you.

For the latest Everquest 2 news, go to the MMORPG.GG EQ2 Hub.

EQ2 Leveling Guide Index

  1. Alternate Advancement Experience
  2. XP Boosts and Bonuses
  3. Items, Gear and Mercenaries
  4. Leveling 1-125 Solo
  5. Powerleveling
  6. Alternate Leveling Methods

Alternate Advancement Experience

If your primary goal is to level up the fastest, always set the AA slider to 0%. The AAs you get for leveling up are plenty and at level 120 you can max out your AAs by going one repeatable quest in the Svarni Expanse. Doing the Live and Let Dye repeatable quest from Shabari in Svarni Expanse will give you enough XP to max out all 350 AAs.

XP Boosts and Bonuses

There are a couple of ways to make the leveling experience go quite a bit faster in EQ2. Below you can see all the possible ways to increase your XP gain.

XP Potions

Most XP potions will increase your Combat XP Gain by 100%. These are very valuable when farming dungeons and mobs. You can buy XP potions from the Marketplace, or you could try checking your Claim window in the menu or by typing /claim. The one-week veteran reward will give you six XP potions and many of the other rewards also give you XP potions. An old account will literally have dozens of XP potions available for each character on the account.

Everquest 2 Leveling XP Potion
Check your /claim to see if you have any free XP potions available.

Experience Vials

Experience Vials are not to be confused with XP potions. These vials can be purchased from the Marketplace and used to store XP in. Players can then sell the vials on the Broker for plat, or you can buy them and use them for a slight level boost. Experience Vials are not recommended unless you have a ton of platinum to spend.

Vitality

Everquest 2 Leveling Vitality

Your character will accumulate Vitality every hour. This is the same as Rest XP in many other MMOs. When you have Vitality you will get a 200% XP bonus. How much vitality you have is indicated by a small arrow on your XP bar.

Veteran Bonus

The Veteran Bonus XP is only for leveling alts. You gain a 20% bonus until XP for each character you have at the maximum adventure or tradeskill level. Up to a 200% bonus

Events

Like any other MMO, Everquest 2 will host bonus XP events from time to time. Keep an eye out on the official EQ2 website for news about the next available event.

Level 100 or 120 Boost

Should you want to skip most of the leveling process you can buy a level 120 or a level 100 Heroic character boost. None of these options are recommended for new players as you will have no clue how to play your class and veterans should be able to level to 100+ in just a matter of hours.

If you buy the latest expansion you will get a free level 120 boost.

Everquest 2 Leveling XP Boost
Using boosts are generally not recommended. Especially for new players.

Items, Gear and Mercenaries

Items

  • Food & Drink – Not very important but having something will help with mana and health regen.
  • Bags – Having some room in your inventory will means you don’t have to stop to sell or delete items.
  • Mount – Very helpful when questing or leveling in overland zones. Some dungeons let you ride mounts so it will speed up the leveling process a bit. Check out a full list of mounts here.

Gear

Gear is not very important at all at low levels as you will quickly out-level any gear and even the most basic Mercenary will destroy everything for you.

You will also get a ton of gear while leveling up, especially in Agnostic Dungeons, so don’t spend too much plat on gear.

If you are strugling with content you can of course look into getting some gear from the Broker.

Mercenary

Having a Mercenary will make a huge difference will leveling. At lower levels, a merc will easily solo groups of mobs that are much higher level than you.

For returning players, check your claim window. The 10 Year Veteran Reward Mercenaries are great while leveling. Lady Liae Croae (Paladin) in Qeynos and Lord Valkiss Ssi’sh (Shadowknight) in Freeport.

You can also find Mercenaries on the Broker, but the standard mercenaries you hire in any of the main cities will do just fine for leveling. A list of available Mercenaries can be found here.

Everquest 2 Leveling Mercenary
The standard Mercenaries that you will find in any of the main cities will do just fine for normal content at lower levels.

The Fastest Way from 1 to 125 Solo

Level 1-3 Tutorial

For the first few levels, just complete the tutorial on the boat. New players can stay on the Isle of Refuge to learn the ropes but if you want to level fast, head over to the boat and go to any of the main cities.

Level 4-10 Farming Mobs in Any Newbie Area

Once in a city, go ahead and hire a Mercenary. Any Mercenary will do.

Now head over to any of the leveling zones close to town with low-level mobs. I like to stay in Qeynos so I tend to go to The Forest Ruins and just have my Mercenary kill things until level 10. This should only take a few minutes. You can also go to Darklight Wood, Frostfang Sea, Greater Faydark, or Timorous Deep.

Level 11-75 Maldura: Algorithm For Destruction (Agnostic Dungeon)

Everquest 2 Leveling Agnostic Dungeons
The portal to the Agnostic Dungeons can be found in Qeynos and Freeport.

Now it’s time to head over to the Agnostic Dungeon portal in the main city of your choice. Any mercenary will be able to tackle the mobs in here as well, but don’t pull big groups as it will incapacitate the merc and he will just stand still.

Both the Maldura dungeons and Stygian Threshold will give vastly superior XP to any of the other dungeons at this point. I stick with Maldura: Algorith For Destruction and it seems to be the fastest in terms of XP.

If you are in need of gear, you can kill the bosses, but if you just want to level quickly its best to just clear out the thrash mobs. I tend to do a mix of both depending on if I’ve outleveled my gear or not.

For the first run, unless you have a powerful Mercenary, it is best to clear out the thrash first to get a few levels since the bosses can be a bit though at lower levels.

  1. As you enter, head straight, up the steps and click the container with the crystal in the bookshelf.
  2. Kill all the spiders, this will spawn the Spider boss.
  3. Kill the boss X-O Arachmech. For your first run you might want to clear some more thrash to level up a bit more before you kill it.
  4. Loot the battery from X-O Arachmech and click the crystal in the bookcase again.
  5. Go down the stairs an clear all the Gnomes.
  6. Kill Old Doclin. You need to pull him out of the mist he creates. Use the back-off command on your Merc to pull him away from the mist.
  7. Loot the five Flow-Through Phylactery that are scattered around this area.
  8. Go back up and go up the stairs to the right from the entrance, and clear all the thrash.
  9. If you are not killing bosses for loot and only want XP, you can exit and re-enter now.
  10. Head down the stairs to Stonerend. DON’T ATTACK HIM!
  11. Click the little white circles that he moves around and stomps on to place a crystal. Do this five times to kill him. You can kill all the Dark Gears Summoners except one, which will have him stand in the same spot.
  12. Now click the Crushed Crystal Shard on the ground and one of the Dark Gears Summoners
  13. Go back up the stairs and place the five Filled Phulactery around the energy barrier.
  14. Kill the boss.
  15. Undead and Dark Gears mobs will spawn around the instance now, so you get go around killing these if you want.
  16. Now head up on the platform above the room with the entrance, and kill Black Bolt. When he dissapears, click the portal to follow him and kill him.

Two full runs through Maldura got me from level 10 to 37 with an XP potion activated in less than an hour.

If at any point you can’t kill a boss, just clear the trash and focus on the bosses you can kill to get better gear and level up. You can also head to Crypt of Agony, the XP isn’t as good but you will get a lot of gear quickly.

If you only want XP you will want to just clear all the spider trash, the gnome trash upstairs and downstairs and then go and reset the dungeon.

Level 76-96 Crypt of Agony Agnostic Dungeon

Around your mid to late 70s, you will want to move on the Crypt of Agony.

There are no puzzles or anything like that here so you can just pull and kill mobs.

Towards the end at level 85 to 96 you should be able to pull almost the entire instance without a merc and kill everything in just a few minutes.

Everquest 2 Leveling Crypt of Agony
In Crypt of Agony you can stay mounted and make huge pulls.

Level 97-120

At level 96 you will stop getting XP from Agnostic Dungeons and its time to start questing.

First of all head to Tranquil Sea. Go past the floating bits of tower to the left and through the gate to Sapswill’s Rest. Talk to T’Kaela the Leveling Merchant and use your Draconic Etyma that you got from the Agnostic Dungeons to buy some new gear.

Everquest 2 Leveling Leveling Vendor
Be sure to upgrade your gear or you will start having a hard time.

Now you can go questing.

Level 121-125

At level 120 you can move on to Visions of Vetrovia.

As you enter the Svarni Expanse, there will be a small chest called Tishan’s Lockbox. Click it and loot gear for yourself and your Mercenary.

Everquest 2 Leveling Visions of Vetrovia
A chest of free gear upgrades just as you enter the Svarni Expanse.

Follow the timeline and do all the quest. At certain point as a new player you might run into some challenging content, and all you can do really is spend time upgrading your Mercenary, Mount, Familiar, Gear and Spells and Abilities.

Other than that leveling from 121 to 125 is pretty fast.

Powerleveling

If you have a friend that can help you out or a second account, leveling will be even faster. Below is an alternative route you can take if you are being powerleveled.

  • Level 1-70Temple of Scale or Throne of New Tunaria
  • Level 70-96Crypt of Agony
  • Level 97-100High Keep: The Bloodline Incursion (Contested). Do all the quests.

Alternative Leveling Methods

Collections

Collections are also a fast way to level up if you got platnium to burn. Head over to the broker and start buying high level collections and turn them in to the collector for rewards and XP.

Congrats on Reaching level 125. If you have any questions or tips for our Everquest 2 Leveling Guide, please leave a comment below!