Poison Basics



First of all a big thanks to all rogues who did a great job to figure out all that great details about poisoning. The list of all would be too long to compile but I have at least to mention Quip Quarrel and his excellent "Unofficial Tome of Poison Mastery" and Zato with his "Official Tome of Poison Mastery", many informations are also taken from The Safehouse and EQ Casters Realm. A big cheer to all rogues who made that site possible.

We will only discuss the howto and some details at this page. You can find the reciptes, ingredient list and other necessary information elsewhere on that site.

Poisons are a tactical boost to rogues. They are a quite expensive utility to boost the chances of a rogue to kill his opponent. This is also one of the most complicated systems in Everquest and it gave generations of rogues a severe headache.


Effects


The effects vary from simply direct damage, damage over time to snare, blind or weaken. There are 16 different effects: All this effects come in upgrades or tiers. A higher tier, means a stronger effect. Weaken I is much Weaker than Weaken III. What Weaken you will use depends on the ingredients you have, your money and the prey. Further, the strenght of a poison is related to the level of the one who applies it (and not on the maker as I mistakenly stated in a previous version of that document). Let's take weaken as example and try to analyze the effects a bit:


Making poisons


For making a poison you need to buy at least the "mortar and pestle" and some suspensions. The mortar and pestle is a 6-space bag with a combine button where you place all the components you need for the actual receipt. As soon as you hit the combine button you will get your poison if your skill is sufficient - else you will get your vial back. Every poison consists of:
Important: the ingredients are not allowed to stack while making. That means if the receipt requires you to use two Spider Venom Sacs you have to put each one of the sacs in its own space or you will not produce anything! (AND the vial is lost)

Please note that you only will gain skill in making poison when you have reached your 21st level but you are able to make them at 20 too. The ingredients are usually hard to get or expensive. You will need many hours to farm them so I recommend to start collecting them at least at level 15. You will usually gain quite fast from making poisons.


Applying Poison


To apply a poison you need to be level 18 and train at least one point at your guild. I suggest you put as many points in as you can afford - the skill is hard/expensive enough to raise. The higher skill you have applying the poison, the faster you will be done applying it. At the start you will need 7 seconds to put a poison on your dagger, later it is rumored to be significantly less, but I still cannot accomplish that.

To poison a weapon you need a piercing one - they are the only ones who will actually be possible to poison - make it stick to your mouse and click it on the poison. You will get a "you have successfully applied the poison" or a "you failed to apply the poison" message. In case you failed, the poison is simply lost (WAAAAAA). If it worked, the poison will be applied to your primary weapon space and will go off as soon as you do a piercing attack (other than backstab). The poison attack is then checked against the poison resist value of the opponent (means: it can be resisted). As you poison your weapon you will sit down automatically and you have to stand up by yourself.

The poison wears off (your weapon) when:
You can now safe a pre-poisoned dagger for later because if you use a sword (1hs) and switch later to piercing, the poison will get off as soon as you land the first piercing blow. Previously you have poisoned your hand and could not save the poison for later but now you can.Fortunately the poisoning of a prey can no longer be interrupted - this was a bug and is fixed now.

As you get your Apply Poison skill from the guild at level 18 you have one great problem: Where to get poisons? For your next two levels you will have several opportunities:

Produced Components


Ther are 4 produced ingredients: Iron Sulphide, Lead Peroxide, Quicksilver and White Lead. To produce the ingredients take the necessary components as noted in the ingredients page and combine them in your mortar&pestle. The produced ingredients are not skill checked and will not fail, but you also will not gain skill from it. They are limited to the receipts in the Miner's guide to Toxology and seems to be a dwarfish speciality.


Final thoughts

In General it is safe to say that poisoning works like a spell. The difference to a spell is just that you can move now while poisoning something without interrupting and you have to make and apply the poison.

The use of poison is an art as making. You have to put in a lot of dedication and money to grow up with that, but it is also very rewarding and fun. As mentioned before the use is more of a tactical nature. You can use it for:
You will surely find a lot more applications when you grow up with this skill. A word on selling poisons: usually I offer a poison to a merchant double and round the price when I plan to sell my precious flask. Do not sell them too cheap. It is a lot of work, a lot of way and a lot of coins you use for every single flask.


Now you are equipped with the basic knowledge of poison. If you like that guide, give me regards: poison a beast and shout you do so in my name. If I ever hear that warcry, it will be my greatest reward.

Kiky Aramagoo (Morell-Thule)