Almar's Everquest Endgame Guides

Everquest Endgame Guides

This guide will cover the Shadow Knight class from Classic EQ until the end of Prophecy of Ro expansion (Level 70). I believe PoR is the end of the Classic Era of EQ, after this expansion things will start to change a lot with both the classes and the game. Eventually by the time you reach Level 100 the game plays a lot differently than it does during this level range.

Shadow Knights are a tank class, they're also hybrids like Paladins which means you won't have the same mitigation that Warriors get. This makes SKs inferior to Warriors as a tank and it's the reason you won't see an SK tanking any major raid targets in era. As an SK you're only better than Warriors in two ways, you get much more self healing than they do and you have much better threat generation.

I'm sure someone will feel the need to point out all of the utility benefits that you get on an SK too like snare, invis, feign death and a even a pet! Ok the last one is a bit of a joke, you do get a pet but it's so useless until PoP+ that it's not even really worth summoning. Eventually you will get your own line of pet spells which brings it closer to you in level, this is when it stops sucking.

All in all despite the drawbacks, Shadow Knights are a very good class during this era. Typically the best way I find it explained is that SKs make a better group tank and Warriors make a better raid tank. With all of their utility and self healing, SKs are just better suited for some situations. There is a reason all the boxers who PL choose an SK instead of a Warrior!

My experience on a Shadow Knight during this era is very high. I played one on Teek quite a bit and I also played one way back in the day, back when SKs could still swarm entire zones. This experience continues into modern day EQ where I still occasionally play an SK as one of my tanks.

Important Stats & Focus Effects

You get the most benefit from stats until you cap them out, this will start to happen in Kunark and Velious if you get raid gear. After you cap your stats the only way to increase them is with AAs. Shadow Knights are a combination of the Warrior and Necromancer class which means you're an Intelligence caster. You're also a tank which means that you need to both survive and hold threat.

When it comes to melee you'll want Strength, Dexterity and the Attack secondary stat for damage (and melee based threat). For tanking you'll need Agility, Stamina and raw AC. You're also going to want Intelligence since mana = threat and also lifetaps which can save your life.

Strength: This increases your Attack and weight limits.

Dexterity: Increases chance to proc during combat and accuracy.

Stamina: Gives you HP.

Agility: Increases AC.

Intelligence: Increases how much Mana you have; the amount of Mana you get per 1 Int scales as you level up.

Planes of Power adds Heroic Stats into the game and these become more and more common until eventually they are on every piece of gear. These stats will let you increase your character's potential in ways similar to their non-heroic counterparts. Much like the normal stats, Heroic Stats will come with caps too.

Heroic Stats get a soft cap, when you go over this you'll start to get diminishing returns for every point put into them. For this reason it's typically best to spread out your HStats a bit. Shadow Knights will want to get Heroic Dexterity, Heroic Agility, Heroic Intelligence and Heroic Stamina.

Heroic Dexterity (Accuracy/Proc Chance): Heroic Dex increases your accuracy and proc chance during combat; it has diminishing returns later in the game once you start getting a lot of it.

Heroic Agility (Avoidance/Strike Through): Increases AC, Dodge, Block and Many of the most important Mod2s. Use my Heroic Stats Guide for more information.

Heroic Intelligence (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max MP Regen Cap for Int Casters.

Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.

Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.

Important Focus Effects

Important Spells, Skills, AAs & Disciplines

Shadow Knights are a combination of Necromancer and Shadow Knight so you'll get a few of the better Necromancer spells with some of the tanking capability of a Warrior. During Classic you get a pretty minor amount of spells and that is improved upon with each expansion. Many expansions (like Luclin and PoP) will add lower level spells to flesh out what's available to you.

Like a Necro you'll get lots of DoT spells like Disease DoTs, Fire DoTs and even the Snare DoT. You'll also get plenty of Lifetap Spells, Feign Death, Pet Spells, a line of Poison Nukes and much more. There are a lot of utility spells and self buffs that you will get on your SK too, a few examples are Grim Aura, Banshee Aura, Torrent of Hate and Cloak of Akheva + Shroud of Chaos (The last 2 start in PoP & are upgraded with every expansion).

Much like all the other classes in EQ you start to change a lot with PoP and Omens of War. You'll get a bunch of self buffs that get upgraded with every expansion and this will increase your DPS and self healing. Add in your epic buffs, your disciplines and AAs and you become a self healing, proccing machine of epic proportions.

Below are the most notable spell lines available to you as an SK.

Self Buffs: You have a few misc self buffs before PoP but I want to cover the PoP - OoW and beyond ones here. Cloak of Akheva + Shroud of Chaos are the first two you get in PoP and they're the main combat oriented ones. Starting with OoW you'll also get Pact of Decay which is your mana regen skele form. Pay attention to the theft line of spells too, Theft of Agony is a good one that you will be using during PoR but you get a couple of others before that.

Terror Line (Hate/Threat): SKs will get a line of spells called Terror Spells which will instantly generate hate for your current target. These spells are added into the game during Luclin and get upgraded for basically every expansion there after. Some examples include Terror of Shadows, Terror of Death, Terror of Teris and Terror of Thule.

Spear Nukes: The best line of nukes that you have on an SK is called your Spear line. This line of spells is added in PoP, when it's added they will pre-date many Spear spells going back to the early levels. Some examples of the 60+ spears are Spear of Decay, Miasmic Spear and Spear of Muram.

Skills

As an SK you'll get a few different skills like Bash, Slam and Taunt. Harm Touch is also no longer a Skill when you're playing on the TLPs, it's been moved to the AA window and redesigned a bit to suck more during the early era of the game. What skills you use on an SK depend on the weapon that you are using, with Taunt probably being the only exception. Taunt is what you'll be using to get agro off people.

If you're using a 1h and shield you'll want to /autoskill Bash since that will bash using your shield. Those of you using a 2h weapon, you'll want to /autoskill Slam since that requires a 2h to use. You never get Kick or any of the other skills so this is really all you need to worry about.

AAs

Just like with the other class guides, I will only cover the clicky AAs available to you. Starting with Classic EQ, you'll want to get Harm Touch out of your AA window, it used to be a Skill but now it's an AA. Starting with the release of Luclin you'll get two mounts under the Special tab. One is called Abyssal Steed and the other is Unholy Steed.

You'll also get Leech Touch in Luclin which is a psuedo Harm Touch-Lifetap skill. It's worth using every time it's off cooldown which can't be said about Companion's Suspension, the only clicky AA you get in PoP. For you this is totally garbage, my advice would be to honestly skip it and let auto grant give it to you.

During OoW you will get Bold Attacks which is very useful for threat generation as well as Death Peace which is an AA Feign Death. We don't get anything during the last expansions of this era, like most classes we have tons of AAs that we get in future eras but nothing else for now.

Disciplines

Resistant Discipline (51) - Kunark (Allakhazam, Lucy) My advice for finding Classic era discs is to check Warrior Tomes merchants; Teniyu Emua in West Freeport is my choice)
Increases your resistances by a lot temporarily.

Fearless (54) - Kunark (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Grants immunity to Fear.

Unholy Aura Discipline (55) - Kunark (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Damage of your Lifetap spells is increased.

Leechcurse Discipline (60) - Kunark (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Melee attacks will heal you and chance to hit is increased by 200%.

Soul Guard (61) - DoN (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Mitigate Melee Damage by 25%, up to a total of 6000.

Soul Shield (69) - DoN (Allakhazam, Lucy)
Mitigate Melee Damage by 25%, up to a total of 10,000.

How to Play: Shadow Knight Basics

Playing a Shadow Knight is pretty easy during this era, you don't get many spells and once you learn which spells to use playing is a piece of cake. You'll normally want to have two different spell sets, /memspellset Buffs and /memspellset Combat. Put all of your Buffs into the Buffs spell set and mem that every time your self buffs run out. Very short self buffs (20min or less) you'll want to keep on your Combat tab.

Your Combat spells will be more or less everything that you use during combat and any short duration buffs. Normally my first slot is a Lifetap, second is a Snare, third is a Poison Nuke, Four and Five and DoTs, 6 is Feign Death (until the AA) and the last two are buffs or useful AC/Stat Drains.

During the early eras your Snare DoT is the best agro generation you can get. Eventually during PoP your Terror line starts to get better and when that happens you'll want to replace a DoT on your bars for Terror. From Classic to PoP though I typically spam snare for agro, the only downside is the DoT aspect of it but that is minor.

Other than this, you play like any other tank does. You're the one who will be taking all of the damage and you'll be expected to hold agro on multiple enemies. Pulling with Terror is typically a great option, it will build agro without impairing your enemy. Before you break mez make sure you Taunt a target - if that fails use Terror to build agro. Use Terror on mezzed targets and Snare on whatever you're fighting, that's typically what I did for agro.

Harm Touch and Leech Touch make great snap agro AAs too, I normally saved both of these for when things went wrong and we pulled too many mobs. Leechcurse Discipline is great for this too since it will lifetap with your melee attacks. Once Dragons of Norrath is released you will get access to your first set of discs that absorb damage.

These discs are called Soul Guard and Soul Shield - they are all you get during this era for mitigation discs. Eventually you will get a bunch of mitigation discs on your Sk and you will be able to tank as good as a Paladin and almost as good as a Warrior in group content. Warriors still conquer in raids though.