Where to go at every level, drawn from our full 73-zone dataset. A primary route from level 1 to the cap, with live alternatives for each band and the loot worth chasing along the way.
Begin in your race's home zone: Qeynos Hills, East Freeport, Nektulos Forest (dark elves), Innothule Swamp (trolls), the Feerrott (ogres), Greater Faydark (elves and gnomes), or Kerra Isle (Kerrans). Kill wildlife and undead near the city and run the early hide and fang quests.
Chase: a first armor set from the gnoll-fang and animal-hide turn-ins.
Tip: stay near the city and avoid the open bear and wolf fields where high-level rangers patrol.
Your first real dungeon: dense gnoll camps and named drops. Faydwer characters run Crushbone (5–20) instead, which serves the same purpose and has more loot to chase.
Chase: Blackburrow's Hardened Bark Breastplate, or in Crushbone the Crown of Crush and the Screaming Mace quest.
Tip: pull singles from the entrance and kill low-health runners fast so they don't drag in packs.
Alternate a dungeon and an open grind: Befallen (6–28) for named loot, or Oasis crocodiles for safe, steady XP. Estate of Unrest (15–35), The Warrens, and the Gorge of King Xorbb are strong alternatives.
Chase: Befallen's Ebon Scythe and the no-trade Shimmering Ruby Stiletto.
Tip: in Befallen and Unrest the long entry tunnels make loose trains deadly. Camp a room, don't roam.
Tiered dungeon camps that carry you through the 20s. Splitpaw is the quieter grind; Runnyeye has better loot but dangerous Evil Eyes. Upper Guk, High Keep, and Najena (20–35) are all live options.
Chase: Upper Guk's Ghoulbane for paladins, and Najena's Journeyman's Boots and Kitchen Toolbelt haste belt.
Tip: bring crowd control (an Enchanter) for Runnyeye's charming Evil Eyes.
Your mid-level dungeon rotation toward 40. Castle Mistmoore (25–45) is the Faydwer choice, and Permafrost (Lady Vox) is the cold-weather option.
Chase: Cazic-Thule's Rubicite Breastplate with its regen aura, and Mistmoore's named armor.
Tip: these have heavy social aggro. A full, balanced group with CC clears far faster than pickup soloing.
The single most important zone of the 30s and 40s, and the game's biggest loot vault. Pick a camp on the Dead Side (the Frenzied Ghoul or the Ghoul Lord) and settle in.
Chase: the Guk classics off Lower Guk: the FBSS haste belt, the Short Sword of Ykesha, the Guise of the Deceiver, and the Shining Metallic Robe.
Tip: you never have to fight anyone for a camp here. Open your own solo instance (D0 to D4) and the zone is yours, then hold one spot rather than roaming, since wandering mobs cause the trains that wipe you.
Close out the last levels to the cap in the toughest in-game dungeons. The Hole carries epic components and top group gear, and Kedge Keep (underwater) is the alternate. Karnor's Castle and Sebilis are Kunark zones that arrive later.
Chase: The Hole's Idol of the Under King and Earthshaker, and Kedge's Phinigel loot.
Tip: pull singles and keep an escape route. These deep dungeons are infamous for deadly trains.
At the cap, the endgame is the planar zones and the dragons. Nagafen's Lair, Permafrost, and the Temple of Solusek Ro round out the top, and the Planes of Hate, Sky, and Fear hold the best gear and motes. In Legends the trio system makes these soloable rather than full raids, scaled by the difficulty you run.
Chase: Nagafen's Golden Efreeti Boots, the planar armor sets, and dragon scale loot. See the raid guides.
Tip: cap your resists before you engage a dragon or a planar god, that's what decides the fight solo.
You start with two classes and level them together from 1. Your third slot unlocks at 10, and at 11 your primary, race, and deity lock to the character. Class levels are permanent and survive swaps: take a class to 30, swap it out and back, and it is still 30. The catch is on the way in, because swapping a fresh class into your trio sets your effective level to your lowest active class. A level-10 class drops you to 10 until it catches up, so plan your swaps around that. You get three loadout slots, and AAs live in one shared pool that follows every class you have leveled.
Pick the three classes you want, commit at 11, and level straight to 50. No city trips, no swap logistics. It is the fastest path to endgame and the right answer for most players. Score the combo in the Forge before you lock it.
For leveling several combos without backtracking. Bind at your camp, swap your two flex slots in town, gate back, and the camp is never lost. Origin gates any character home and the rituals system carries ports, gate, and bind from any class you have ever leveled, so you no longer need a Druid or Wizard primary for it. This is also the best AA farm in the game, since running a fresh class from 10 in your endgame gear earns far more than grinding at cap.
For players who want every class at 50. Level a full trio, use a Primary Class Unlock Token to swap your primary, replace both flex slots, and repeat with a fresh non-overlapping trio. Sixteen classes make five complete trios plus a wildcard. It is the most complete path and the slowest on AA per hour, since three fresh classes at once earn one class's worth of AA. See class switching for the mechanics.
D0 if you have a snare, D1 if you do not: D0 mobs flee at low health and D1 mobs do not, so without a snare you spend the session chasing runners. Each tier up is +20% XP and better-plussed drops, so move to D2 once your trio handles mobs with extra classes, and save D4 for gear farming. You can always spin up a personal instance instead of waiting on a camp. A first run at a normal pace is around 50 hours, faster on repeats. See the difficulty guide.
Claiming or contesting a camp is a thing of the past. Open your own private instance at any difficulty from D0 to D4 and the whole zone is yours, no competition, no kill-stealing, no waiting for a spawn. Pick a spot and farm.
D0 is the gentlest setting, and the community reports well-built trios taking the classic dragons like Nagafen and Vox as early as the low 40s on D0. It depends heavily on your build and gear, so treat it as a target, not a guarantee, and push the difficulty up once you out-gear them.
Armor Class has no hard ceiling. There is a soft cap around level × 6 + 25 of worn AC, past which each point does a little less, but stacking AC keeps helping. EQL may retune this, so confirm the exact number in-game.
There is no flat 255 resist wall. In PvE you can fully resist at most 95% of the time, and every ~6 points of a resist adds about 1% to that chance. So before a dragon's breath or a planar nuke, stack the matching resist high, roughly 500 or more to approach the ceiling. See the difficulty guide.
The lowest-stress fast-leveling trio is Magician / Cleric / Wizard, your summoned elemental tanks while you heal it and nuke from safety. Try it in the Build Forge.
Fit a Druid or Wizard into your trio at some point, map-wide teleports save an enormous amount of travel time between these zones.
Higher difficulty and clearing rares/bosses speeds XP and improves your mote drops. But the real engine is throughput, kill as many mobs as fast as you can, ideally in a group.
Motes of Potential drop the whole way up. Pour most of them into your spells and songs early. They can only be raised with motes, while gear can be combined.
Loot rolls at the "+" level of the difficulty you run: D1 drops items at +1 or higher, D4 at +4 or higher. Pushing difficulty as you level means gear arrives pre-upgraded. See the difficulty guide and motes.