How does it work in game?
When you right click a lower level group member, you will see an option to Mentor them.
Selecting "Mentor" will make you appear and perform as if you were the same level as your Apprentice. It will be as if you were that level with a full bar of XP, and had all of the abilities that a person with a full experience bar of that level would have (for levels in which you get new abilities part of the way through).
Mentors will be able to continue using their existing equipment. There is no need to get diffferent sets of equipment for mentoring people of different levels.
Mentors can use any spell or combat art for their class that is in line with their Apprentice's level.
The Apprentice will receive an experience bonus while under the guidance of a Mentor. Up to 5 other players can act as a Mentor for a single player at the same time. Each subsequent person Mentoring an Apprentice adds to the bonus experience that the Apprentice receives. A single Apprentice can be mentored by up to five other people.
The Mentors and Apprentice will receive experience, loot, and quest credit as if the Mentor were the same level as the Apprentice.
Mentors do receive viable amounts of experience and advance toward their actual level while mentoring, though at a slightly reduced rate. The rates will fluctuate while this feature is in testing.
The one exception to Mentor experience gain is taking an Apprentice who is under level 10. Helping someone through the most basic parts of the world doesn't provide sufficient opportunities for the Mentor to learn new things, and the Mentor doesn't gain experience during that period.
Apprentices must have their Experience Gain turned on in order to be Mentored. (The optional XP disable can't be in use.) Mentors can have this setting any way they prefer. We are sensitive to the possibility of creating a new way for people to retain arbitrary levels for the purposes of bot-farming, and don't wish to create a system that encourages it.
A Mentor can right click their Apprentice and select "Stop Mentoring" when they wish to stop acting as a Mentor.
If the Mentor or Apprentice leaves the group, the Mentor will go back to their original level.
In Closing
Mentoring will be arriving on Test Server in its next major update, this week. It is currently scheduled to be available on all live servers two updates from now.
Depending on the issues that arise on Test Server, we may decide to offer it in a Beta form to the live servers an update early. Our goal is to get this new feature out there for everyone to use as soon as possible.
There are more and more people arriving in EverQuest II every day and many of them have friends already playing who are higher level. We're thrilled to be able to offer a way they can play together, right off the bat.
