Newbie Guide to Ranking and low EQ.

[mya]

How to rank fast.

There are two ways to rank fast.

I - One is to take the adventurer class power rank to what ever rank you need, get the best pets and some armor then convert to your definitive guild, and power rank on your definitive class while having the pets tank. This allows you to save about 10 practices and allows dumb races to save a lot of work if they are planing on only spending 1 practice (powergaming). As a newbie don't bother, just request the Journeyman boost for newbies.

II - Power rank with your definitive class from the start. This might be harder to some players due to having difficulty to ranking with some classes like mages

Ranking.

First thing, is to keep hunting in the arena plasma beasts and lizards until you are very close to level 6 but not level 6. If you need to heal up, move up from the arena to the newbie cleric and sleep near him. He will randonmly casts some buffs that might aid you.

Once you are close to L6, move up, and visit all temple pits looking for equipment. Then move up twice from the arena to land in Maelbrim.

Visit the scarecrow that will give you 15000 gold and asks you to go find him a practice weapon. Pocket the gold and KEEP your practice weapon.
With the gold, visit the vendor a few rooms from the central square and buy the "love" T-shirt for AC.

Visit a temple, and travel through the newbie Arena to Val Miran and purchase the Katana near the central square and return to Maelbrim.

Next move to the Kamir Caves, north of Maelbrim and kill some bats. You will get to L6 and lose the newbie arena shortcuts. Go the SW part of the Kamir Caves and get the bracer in the chest behind a locked door. Key is in the corpse nearby. Move outside the cave, and wait about 3 min for it to repop and a new bracer to appears.

Now you can either hunt rats, or do some quests (mages). The objective is getting to L8.

You can visit the Stables to get the first horse quest xp and a free horse.
You can give your practice weapon to the scarecrow for more XP.
You can visit your guild for more XP and start the guild quests, mounted on a HORSE. Never be without a horse, it just slows you down.

Once you hit L8, visit the Elven Kingdom and buy an alsatian. This beast will be outdamaging your up to L15. Buy some backpacks and if your DEX is lacking buy the Elven Girdle in the armor shop. The idea is to have good AC to prevent being harmed by mobs.

Now the guide splits.

Goods will want to go hunt oozes in the Burned woods south of Val Miran with their pet. Hunt there until L15.
Evils will want to go hunt snails and kids in the sewers under Miruv Hor. Once you get to L12 you might conside move to EverGreen south of Miruvhor and hunt Brownies.

Once both get to L15 there is more stuff to do.
- Start gathering gold by visiting the Blackwatch blacksmith pile, and geting the broken armor and selling it to the blacksmith next to it. Or the armorer in Val Miran, or the Slith in the Hamlet. On blackwatch you should also visit the temple and get the onyx shard floater (HP). And get the vials of sanctuary from the goodwife.
- Purchasing equipment in the Hamlet:

• veil for face
• gloves for hands
• 2x copper rings
• ruby brooch for neck

  Then kill the fat man north in the Hamlet to get a sparkler, permanent light.
Meeles kill the vagabound half-elf for the heavy scimstar sword. Use sanctuary and your pet and dirt.

Meeles might wish to visit the troll vilage to get onyx/opal rings. Get two of each.

Mages (and rogues) who managed to get some gold (15000), should visit the Drow city and purchase the scroll of stone golem. A charred and frayed scroll. Watch out, because reciting the scroll is an area attack and if you do it in the shop you will just get a fast transport to your pit as a corpse. You can purchase it at L10, but I think it's faster to wait to 15. At L20, you should get a new scroll, since the golem is caped to L20.

People who also have 10000 gold, should do the quest for the heklmet barrel of +2/+2 hit/damroll, in the western sea island. If you don't know, just ask nicely another player.

It's a good time for meeles and some mages to visit the Mountain trail and get the teeth necklace from the two orcs. Some leggings, elven pads.

Adventurers should purchase the heavy claymore from Maelbrim weapon shop, and a hunting bow and sparkling arrows. If you have some spare cash purchase the spear thrower and spear. It's better. Buy at least x10 arrows or more and put in back. Spears, you can wear the spear x4 to convert the chunk of 25 into a chunk of 100. Then remove them and put in the backpack.

From 15 fowards.

Goods should hunt in the Tombs. You should focus your equipment on magic AC, since the vampires deal magic damage. You must tank, because pets AC is very bad vs magic attacks. Mages should cast all AC buffs, BMG,s use Colour spray, mages fire spells. Meeles dirt.

Evils should keep in Everwild and have the Stone golem tank. Meeles use the heavy scimitar and probably a shield. Most things in Evergreen resist some form of magic, so use physical weapons. Hunt brownies, dryads and nymphs. The idea it to have them give 500+ xp per kill. There are also 4 lady rangers in Everwild, learn their locations and kill them at about L25.

Once you hit L21, if you know how to use a sword and are good, you should move to blackwatch and find the guard with the blackwatch sword that is OFF-Duty and request it from him. Evils can kill him, if skilled enough. This guard does not has sanctuary. Goods can also request equipment from guards starting at rank 16.

From 20 to 30 all characters should visit the Elemental Canyon and kill everything. Meeles might do this closer to L20, mages closer to L30. It's a matter of how skillful you are with your character.
Mages should look out for the Culet of Obsidian Leaves leggings from the Fire Pilgrim. And the elemental spine from the guy at the entrance.
Meeles, should defeat the fire advocate and get the pyre lance (polearm) from the door nearby. Defeat the Wind Pilgrim and get the cursed sword from the door nearby. Also a pair of Ice and fire daggers. Even a Mote near the entrance, that allows you to cast 'create spring'.
Character without detect invisible should visit the giant strawberry chest and raid it of juicy pills of detect invisibility.
Characters with identify should kill everything in this area and build a text file with all the ID's of the equipment. This should be your standard practice from now on.

On you hit L30, you should see if someone is in your PK range and engage in a bit of PK. Explore new areas that you find safe, and get better armor.

L30 fowards

Goods should only leave the Tombs after L30. Then visit the Magi in the keep north of Blackwatch to request the ice sword "gaze", or get a ice dagger from the Elemental canyon. Mages if alone should just use a staff to improve chances of parry. Good hunting grounds is the centaur camp. If you are alone purchase the pet Soldier from Aria. He kicks dirt.  Which is very useful for mages. 

Meeles at around L36-38 should get a bow and head to the Kaddar. Shoot the kaddar from 1 room away and power rank to 40.
Then visit the Pentagram and fight Fire demons and Ice demons and Huge demons. A storm warrior with vuln weapons can hunt alone to L50.

Mages, after L30 if you are alone your best bet is to do guild quests. Invokers might hunt centaurs a bit solo, and at 40 do Pentagram elemental demons. But if you know how to do guild quests, it's faster. Just always use a mount and don't be afraid to recall. If you don't know where they are sending you, it's a good time to learn. It's not that hard. Tip: You can WHERE MOB NAME most of the times.

Evil meeles at L28-31 should move from Rangers in Everwild into the Small men at the Labyrinth NE of Mirhuv hor. At ~L38, move to Crystalmir Caverns and hunt civilians. Personally at L45 I do quests even with meeles if solo.

 

Some free Tips:

If you are a mage, wear a shield at all times up to L50 when ranking alone. This increases your AC. Shields are everywhere. For example, the minoma shield carried by margret, the horned shield. Or the Warded shield from the golem in the Tainted valley. There is a 1h staff for sale in the Weaponshop in Falen dare, the pike. At ~L30 a mage low hitroll should not allow him to hit monsters, so just use this crap staff and a shield.

Mages should focus on AC and next on hitroll at low ranks WHEN RANKING. HP only slows you down, what you want is to not get hit at all.
Meeles on ~20 hitroll and full damroll.

Learn how to do guild quests. This will always allow you to rank alone on any character.

The stone golem should always tank physical damage monsters pre L30.

Good mages focus on magic AC, evil mages focus on physical AC pre L30.

Get 20 barrels of milk inside a backpack from the shop in Ralerdia (werebeast town). Storm giants, buy milk in Of-Col.
Get the water barrel from the cabin west of Val Miran. It's free. Latter get the mote for create spring.

At low ranks try to always get the vials when you pass near. You will need them latter when you are trying to get EQ.

Hurt pets can be told to sleep. Pets can ordered to rescue you with: >order petName rescue yourName

If you are evil, bored from Everwild and have a blackwatch sword, you can hunt in the Tombs.

Take the initiative in asking others to join you in hunts. Even if you can't lead, it will be obvious and they will take lead.

Don't bother training pre L30. Training goes faster the higher rank you are. Train at L42. Exception are critical stuff like defenses.

Use pets when ranking. For example at L20 you can get the gorrila from the Elven Kingdom who has two attacks and dirt kicks (not often).

 

@Magick Give us some tips. I know you know allot about ranking at low levels.

[Wade]

Haha, Strawberry bush. 

Also the girls in murivhor sewers are far superior for evil and neutrals from the get go. 

 

[Pali]

1 hour ago, Wade said:

Haha, Strawberry bush. 

Also the girls in murivhor sewers are far superior for evil and neutrals from the get go. 

 

Agreed, though the risk there is higher - the girls hit harder than the rats, and you may end up facing two or more mobs at a time there unexpectedly if another girl or a runaway kid walks in (and the kid can mess up a level 5 real easy).  So there's a trade-off here, efficiency vs risk.

[Magick]

@mya Raspberry bush, not strawberry.

And no, I'm pretty awful at low level ranking.  Well, ranking in general.  Mostly due to my infrequent playing, generally having one character at a time and wonderful habit of taking my sweet time leveling due to being lazy.

I'd ask someone who goes through a half dozen characters a week instead of me.  They're the ones that should be the most efficient at it with all the practice they get.  

[Zavero]

@Fool_Hardy don't you play a lot of characters?

[Fool_Hardy]

Oh yeah.

Mya is spot on with exception to a couple of things, Goods should avoid the centaur camp alone. Go to Marak, better exp, easier to rank alone, more privacy. Kill gate guards, young female giant (black smiths assistant?), ogre commoners, drunk ogre, human swordsmen, and repeat. About one rank every couple of passes. Easy as pie, no risk.

Another thing to remember is this, several quests have predetermined exp rewards. You can literally get your final rank with a few of them. One quest line gives 12k total exp, that's half the last rank on ANY character.

Also, the new elemental canyon is far superior for gathering gold than the blackwatch. Its also quite good for ranking, there are four or five creatures that provide ~1k exp @ upper thirties levels.

As for low level ranking, Evil <10 go to the sewers, small girls and homeless kids until rank 5, snails and runaways until rank 12, then hit the forest.

Average time to get to fifty and trained, I almost never travel in a group, 15-20 hrs. By thirty hrs, I am rounding out the 100's.

In 1.0 this would take weeks, for the best of us.

As for the guild quests, they work fine, but make your movements predictable. Far more dangerous to keep going into town than to keep gaining exp. I use them, but some people take advantage of you using them, so be prepared for sinister hearts.

[Kyzarius]

I can go from 20 to 50 doing guild quests on 6 to 8 hours.

 

[Fool_Hardy]

5 hours ago, Kyzarius said:

I can go from 20 to 50 doing guild quests on 6 to 8 hours.

 

Agreed. But we can do the same with ranking, and master skills and spells along the way.

My Observation is this. I will acquire more gold if I guild quest all the way up, I will master a dozen or more skills on the way if I hunt alone to the top. Time wise its a wash.

Kyz, you have a way of making me think differently. Would that I had you at work when the lasers break down. <reserved for another thread to not derail>

[Zavero]

5 hours ago, Kyzarius said:

I can go from 20 to 50 doing guild quests on 6 to 8 hours.

 

I haven't done many of the guild quests. Are they newbie friendly?

Edit: What does a good level 30 gear set look like for melee/mage?

[Manual Labour]

You can do easy quests, which live up to their name for steady exp and gold. Medium gives more and is usually pretty easy. Hard often asks you to kill a mob, it's hard to predict if it will be an easy or hard or impossible mob. I usually only do hard quests with melees, when I am trying to rank.

This all applies to caballed characters too who want to farm CP, except hard quests get easier when you have a good set of EQ and some cabal abilities.

edit: for eq at level 30 buy from the hamlet and clear out elemental canyon.

[Fool_Hardy]

by 30 you can get anything in the elemental canyon.

by 16 you can request blackwatch armor, sword is 21 IIRC.

But if your just wanting eq to rank in, buy a suit from the merchants. Gathering appropriate equipment would take longer than ranking.

[Kyzarius]

I usually do all my training at 50.  Though i have been playing hardcore characters unless its my q slot.   So the training is extremly fast.