Understanding Your Character
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In this guide, we'll have a look at your character's attributes, inventory, and knowledge.
Your Character 
Edit
Your character's attributes are shown in the Character window. Access this window by pressing C, or through the EQII Menu. Notice that there are several tabs along the top and bottom which allow you to access further information about your character.
On the Character tab, you can see your Attributes, Resistances, and Defenses. Some additional details are shown on secondary pages which are accessed through the drop-down menu. Let's discuss some of the information on this screen:
Attributes Edit
- Main Article: Character Attributes
EQ2 characters are described by five attributes. Your race dictates your starting attributes. Each time you gain a level, your most important attributes will improve slightly. All five attributes have some importance to all classes:
- Strength: Affects the Power pool and damage amount for fighters.
- Agility: Affects the Power pool and damage amount for Scouts.
- Stamina: Affects the Health pool, mitigation and the chance to avoid attacks all together.
- Intelligence: Affects the power pool and spell damage for Mages.
- Wisdom: Affects the power pool and damage for Priests.
Resistances Edit
- Main Article: Resistance
Below the attributes, your resistances are shown. Resistances are your defense against spells. They are the magical counterpart to mitigation, as they absorb a flat percentage of incoming damage. There are 3 types of resistances, corresponding to the 3 types of spell damage mobs can use in EQ2. All nonphysical attacks in EQ2 fit into one of these 3 types. The 3 types are Arcane, Elemental, and Noxious. Although the tool-tip will display the reduced damage from an even-con enemy, it is not always accurate, as some spells are "harder to resist" and require varying levels of additional mitigation.
Defenses Edit
Your defensive melee stats are shown in the lower part of the window. These are "secondary stats": they're calculated from your attributes and skills (plus your equipment and buffs). Point your mouse cursor at each of them to see a tooltip describing what they mean. The most important defense stats are:
- Mitigation: reduces the severity of physical attacks that hit you.
- Avoidance: your ability to avoid a physical attack, taking no damage at all.
Skills Edit
- Main Article: Skills
Choose the Skills tab to see your character's skills. Skills affect how well your character will perform certain actions. Skills go up in rank automatically through general usage, and are limited by your level (the maximum rank for a skill is your level * 5). Skills are divided into three main categories:
Adventure Skills:
- Combat: these skills directly affect your ability to successfully attack, skills over the cap also marginally increase Combat Art damage.
- Spellcasting: these skills directly affect the performance of your spells.
- Avoidance: these skills directly affect your ability to avoid physical damage. Behind the scenes, these skills are equivalent to Resistances.
Tradeskill Skills: these skills affect your ability to craft items.
General Skills:
- Harvesting: these skills affect your ability to extract materials from harvesting nodes in the world.
- General: these skills affect your swimming, falling, and alcohol tolerance.
- Language: these all-or-nothing skills determine whether you understand each language or not. See Languages for more information.
Other Character Info Edit
We're not going to discuss every page of the Character window in detail in this guide, but here's a quick overview:
- Factions page: shows your current reputation with all factions that you've discovered in the world.
- Options page: allows you to customize your character's appearance and voice.
Your Inventory Edit
On the left side of the Character window, you see a "paper doll" view of your character, surrounded by his or her inventory slots.
Equipment Slots Edit
If this is a new character, then you'll have starting equipment in some of the slots, but most equipment slots will be empty.
- To the left is your clothing or armor, which usually provides mitigation against physical attacks.
- To the right is your jewelry, which usually boost your resistances, but don't provide mitigation.
- Below your paper doll is your weaponry and other held items, and food/drink.
- Along the bottom are six inventory slots that can hold backpacks or other containers.
Money Edit
- Main Article: Money
At the very bottom of the window, your current amount of money is shown.
- Your money automatically converts to the best denomination. The exchange rate between coin types is 100-to-1.
 | For EQ2X Players Only:
If you have a Bronze or Silver membership, then your money is limited to 5 gold per level (for Bronze) or 20 gold per level (for Silver). Gold and Platinum memberships have no money limitations. |
Bags and Items Edit
Along the bottom of the window are six slots that can hold backpacks or other containers. Double-click a bag to open it. You can open and close all of your inventory bags at once by pressing Alt+I.
As a new character, you'll start with one bag, and you might obtain a second bag from your early quests. You'll find that these bags fill up fast as you kill creatures and harvest materials on your adventures. You can sell items to NPC merchants to free up space, but you'll want to buy additional bags as soon as you've amassed enough cash to afford them.
As you finish quests and defeat monsters, you'll often receive items for your efforts. When you accept these items, they automatically go into your bag slots. Find the item in your bag, and right-click it to see a menu of actions: Examine, Equip (if you can wear it), Use (if it can be activated), or Destroy.
If you don't want to keep an item, it's usually better to sell it than destroy it. To sell an Item for a few coins, find an NPC merchant and click on him to open the Buy/Sell window. Or, if you think the item is valuable to other players, you could find a Broker NPC in your home city and put the item up for sale.
| | For EQ2X Players Only:
If you have a Bronze or Silver membership, then some of your backpack slots will be locked and unavailable to you. To unlock the remaining inventory slots, you must upgrade to Gold or Platinum membership. |
Appearance Slots Edit
The Appearance tab shows you your Appearance slots. In the Appearance slots you can place any armor, clothing, or weapon that's usable by your class. Your character doesn't get any benefit from these items; they are only used to change what your character looks like. These Appearance slots are only for vanity's sake. When you find a piece of armor whose appearance you really like, but you can't justify using it for one reason or another, then you can put it in your Appearance Slot instead.
Your Knowledge Edit
- Main Article: Abilities
Bring up your Knowledge Book by pressing K. The book is divided into sections: Abilities, Spells, Combat Arts, and Tradeskills. Each section can grow to several pages. A "Sort" button lets you customize the order of the icons in each section.
We'll discuss the Knowledge Book more in the guide about Spells and Combat Arts. For now, just know that all of your character's abilities and spells are automatically placed in the Knowledge Book. When you get a new ability or spell, it'll be found in the Knowledge Book.
- Abilities: These are general abilities such as Sprinting, Sitting, as well as your Call of City ability (which send you back to your home city). This section also contains abilities that come from customizing your character through Alternate Advancement and Traditions.
- Spells: If you're a spellcasting class, then your spells are listed in this section. Spells typically have powerful effects, and take several seconds to cast.
- Combat Arts: If you're a melee class, then your combat arts are listed in this section. Combat arts typically are less powerful than spells, but cast very quickly.
- Tradeskill: When you take up a tradeskill, you'll receive Crafting Skills that are appropriate to your chosen profession. These crafting skills are found in the Tradeskill section of your Knowledge Book. You'll gain more skills every so often as you gain levels in your tradeskill.
When you point your mouse at an icon, you'll get a pop-up tooltip briefly explaining the ability or spell. For more detailed information, right-click the icon and choose "Examine".
To use your spells and abilities, you can click on the icons within the Knowledge Book, or you can drag-and-drop icons to your hotkey bar and use them from there instead. EQ2 automatically adds your first few spells and abilities to your hotkey bar, but you should get accustomed to putting the icons on your hotkey bar yourself. Once you move up to a second hotkey bar (Add an additional hotkey bar by right-clicking an icon on the existing bar and choose "Open New Hotbar"), you'll have to add icons to it yourself.
Your Condition Edit
Your character's condition is described by two resources: Health and Power. They are represented by the green and blue bars next to your character's name.
- You lose health each time an enemy damages you. If you run out of Health, then you die.
- You use Power to cast spells or perform combat arts. If you run out of Power, then you can't use any of your abilities - all you can do is auto-attack.
Health and Power regenerate automatically - slowly while in combat, quickly when not in combat. It is not necessary to sit or stand still to regenerate.
Food and Drink Edit
- Main Article: Food and drink
Food and drink are necessary for efficient progress in Norrath. Food increases the amount of Health you regain when out of combat. Beverages increase the amount of Power you regain when out of combat. Some food and drink also provide bonuses to your attributes, such as Strength or Intelligence.
Each food and drink is rated for a certain adventuring level. You must be of the appropriate adventuring level to gain the full effect provided by the food or beverage. Low-level characters will not get any extra benefit from using high-level food, and high-level characters will have increased downtime from using low-level food.
Most of the food and drink items available in the game are crafted by players (the Provisioner tradeskill class). Therefore, the best way to get food and drink is to buy it from other players through the Broker, or to make it yourself. The food and drink sold by NPC merchants is of very low quality, and is not recommended. Occasionally, you'll receive decent food as a quest reward.
| Index of Beginner's Guides |
| The Basics |
The Details |
The Adventure |
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