The alternative advancement system allows anyone who has purchased and installed EverQuest(r): Shadows of Luclin to further customize their high level (51+) characters. Customized features include things such as minor permanent statistic and resistance boosts, unique skills based on your class (warrior, magician, etc.) or archetype (fighter, magic user, and priest), and general skills available to everyone. These skills include anything from enhanced metabolism to improvements in skills already available to your class. You can also gain a title for your character based on the choices you make when enhancing your character. These titles will be visible to other players.

Gaining these alternate skills and powers will require the expenditure of experience points. You will be able to funnel incoming experience either into your alternative advancement pool or into your standard experience pool. You can even choose to have a percentage of your incoming experience go into each pool. Once enough experience has entered the alternative advancement pool, you will receive skill points that may be used to acquiring your enhancements. When you acquire the proper amount of training points, you will have the option of choosing which enhancement you wish to gain. Some enhancements may have prerequisites. A prerequisite is a skill or skills that you will need to obtain before you can get the enhancement.

Experience loss due to death suffered by the character will be taken from the "Leveling" experience pool, it will not impact your alternative advancement pool.

You can access the Alternate Advancement menu by clicking on the ADV button in the inventory screen.

Note: All characters will be able to open the interface screen for Alternate Advancement. But only those that actually purchase the Shadows of Luclin expansion will be able to earn any of these abilities.

Also Note: EverQuest is an evolving game. We may add new abilities or change existing ones at a future date. We will, of course, attempt to keep changes to a minimum and will update this document to reflect such changes.

Unlocking Archetypes and Class Abilities:

There are three types of Alternate Abilities: General, Archetype and Class Abilities. Each is a stepping stone for the next. Attaining a certain number of General abilities is required before you can learn any abilities from your Archetype. Similarly, you will have to attain a prerequisite number of abilities from your Archetype to start gaining abilities from your Class group. There are also level requirements for each of these levels. Keep in mind that you can't gain any of these abilities unless you own Shadows of Luclin.

These requirements are in addition to any prerequisites needed for some abilities.

General abilities: A character must be level 51 or higher to open up the General abilities.
Archetype abilities: A character must have spent six skill points on General abilities and be 55th level or higher to open up the Archetype abilities.
Class abilities: A character must have spent twelve skill points on Archetype abilities and be 59th level or higher to open up the Class abilities.

Skill Levels and skill points:

Once you have gained enough experience points toward alternate advancement (enough to fill the experience bar) you will earn one skill point. It is these skill points that allow you to purchase alternate advancement abilities. Each ability will require a certain number of skill points to purchase one skill level with that ability.

Every ability available through the Alternate Advancement system has a skill level associated with it. For many of these abilities there is only one skill level, meaning that once you purchase the ability you have attained all the skill available for that ability. But several abilities have more than one skill level. Gaining a second or third (or more) skill level in an ability will improve that ability. However, it is important to note that a second skill level is usually more costly than the first, and the third more costly than the second. That expense is rewarded, however. If additional skill levels cost more, the skill level also means a greater increase in the power of that ability.

Let's look at two examples:

Improved Natural Strength has five skill levels. However, each skill level for this ability costs one skill point. Each time you raise your skill level with this ability you gain two points of strength.

Healing Adept (from the Priest Archetype) has three skill levels. Each skill level costs progressively more skill points. The first skill level costs two skill points for a 2% improvement in healing spells. The second skill level costs four points, but improves that percentage to 5%. The third skill level costs six skill points, but raises the percentage to 10%.

Titles:

Upon attaining enough skill ranks with the Abilities of each type (General, Archetype and Class), characters will be granted a title to show their efforts. The title for anyone meeting the requirements for General Abilities will be given the title Baron or Baroness. Other titles will be given as the character progresses through their alternate advancement, but we don't want to spoil the fun by giving them all away here.

Ability Types:

There are two types of abilities, passive and active.

Passive abilities are always on and always have effect. Most abilities are passive. In fact, all General and all Archetype Abilities are passive.

Active abilities need to be triggered by the player. Every active ability has a Refresh Timer associated with it. This indicates how long it will be after using the ability before it can be used again. Refresh Timers are given with two times, in game time and real life time. For every minute that passes in the real world, 20 minutes passes in the game world.

General Abilities: The General abilities are available to any character level 51 and above that has the Shadows of Luclin expansion. All General Abilities are Passive. Every skill level for every General ability costs one skill point.

Archetype Abilities:

The Archetype abilities are available only characters level 55 and above that have spent six skill points on General Abilities. There are three Archetypes - Caster, Melee and Priest.

Enchanters, Magicians, Necromancers and Wizards can choose abilities from the Caster Archetype.
Monks, Rogues and Warriors can choose abilities from the Melee Archetype.
Clerics, Druids and Shaman can choose abilities from the Priest Archetype.

Hybrids can choose their abilities from the Archetypes of both of their parent classes (with a few abilities excepted).

Paladins, Rangers and Beastlords receive both Priest and Melee Archetypes
Bards and Shadowknights receive both Melee and Caster Archetypes.

Important Note: Some Archetype abilities are restricted and can only be acquired by certain classes. For example, Spell Casting Mastery improves the use of specialization skills. Hybrids don't get specialization, therefore they can not gain the Archetype Ability to enhance specialization. Other restrictions will be listed in the skill description.

Class Abilities

The Class abilities are only available to characters level 59 and above that have spent twelve skill points to purchase Archetype Abilities. Obviously a character can only choose Class Abilities belonging to their class.

There are two types of Class ability. The first type is similar to the Archetype abilities, with three skill levels. The cost for those types of skills are always the same. The first skill level of these Class abilities cost three skill points. The second skill level costs six skill points. The third skill level costs nine skill points.

The second type of Class ability only has one skill level. However, that one skill level costs a different number of skill points for each ability. The skill point cost for each of these abilities is shown in the ability description.

All Class Abilities are passive unless a refresh time is shown.

Bard
Beastlord
Cleric
Druid
Enchanter
Magician
Monk
Necromancer
Paladin
Ranger
Rogue
Shadowknight
Shaman
Warrior
Wizard