New Player Guide to Glory and Riches

[Kevan]

Ok, so you’ve chosen the best non-PVP freeshard in the market and you’re the type of player who likes to have a path put in front of you. Forget blazing trails, son, I want Google Maps to tell me where to go!

Well, call me Google Maps.

There is a relatively linear path of progression you can take to power and riches. Sure, there are hundreds of deviations you can take, including other tameable pets and bio pets. You can also skip steps through heavy gold farming, donations to the shard, etc. I’m not going to delve into those options, however. I’m also not going to tell you how to make the gold you’re going to need (with 1 exception). I just want to tell you a good path to take to get to your destination before you run out of gas. See the Godmode Formula guide for other tips on how to play properly.

Keep in mind the order of this path is, in my opinion, a value based path which tells you the largest gains of power for the cheapest time/gold investments. Saving up for imprisoned pets, for example, would be made a lot easier by doing the steps beforehand first, and if you do the steps in order, you’ll get those imprisoned pets going in the fastest amount of time.

On the final section, regarding relayers, you'll find a lot of different opinions on the path to take. Take everyone's viewpoint, your own experiences and intentions, and decide for yourself which path you prefer. I took the minority's path. Some people will vehemently argue for the majority's path. There is valid support for both sides.

Here’s the summary of where you want to go:

Getting Started --> Nobles/Mules & Newbie Champ --> House/Bees --> 220 Dex --> Imprisoned Pets/GoC Gear --> Relayers

Now, let’s break them down further.

Getting Started: Before you can walk, you have to crawl (ok some babies skip crawling, bad analogy. Either way, you get the point). Raise the following skills to 100: anatomy, animal lore, animal taming, archery, chivalry, focus, healing, hiding, magery, meditation, necromancy, resisting spells, spirit speak, stealth, tactics, veterinary. Train either bushido or ninjitsu to at least 50 in order to perform weapon specials. I would also recommend training tracking to at least 40-50 to make doom gauntlet easier but some people don’t bother. For animal taming, see the alternate guide to animal taming using crafted pet dyes and whatnot. It’s costly, but by doing the rat quest for organics, escorting NPCs, or farming places like shame dungeon, you can probably avoid the annoyance of manually taming animals up to 100 which many people do not find to be fun. I would also recommend getting your stats to 125str/125dex/50int.

Get yourself a yumi from the vendors.uoex.net site. The most important stat is having 38 or higher mana leech to do the weapon special “armor pierce.” Fireball/lightning is great to have, but with early gear levels it’s not as important as most people think. Armor Pierce is a huge damage boost. I wouldn’t worry about leveling the weapon. Wait to put a level deed onto something worthwhile. A beginners yumi shouldn’t cost you more than 5-10k gold. If you want something worth leveling, I would probably start with a crafted (yes, even though crafted items take a penalty when being leveled) yumi with 45-50+ mana leech and lightning or fireball at 35-50+ as well. Hit Life Leech, Hit Lower Defense are also a really nice bonus to have.

Nobles/Mules & Newbie Champ/Regular Champs: So you’ve trained your skills, got yourself a decent starter weapon, and made a bit of gold. What next?

I would recommend getting 5 Mules (86.6 animal taming is technically enough for them), or getting animal taming and animal lore 110 power scrolls, raising those skills to 106.5 or higher, and getting yourself 5 Nobles. Keep in mind, often you will find yourself with 4 Nobles and 1 Mule, as the Mule is important to hold the piles of gold you accumulate while hunting. Your backpack will generally only hold around 20-25k gold max, even less when your pets are shrunk. Your mule will be holding a lot of your gold gains in its pack.

Your nobles/mules must be bonded to you or you will lose them if they die. Very important. Also, it’s recommended that you get nobles/mules with 1000+ hit points and maxxed resists. If you need help buying mules/nobles I’m sure people can help you in the game.

You will heal your pets using cleric spells for the most part. Set up an easy-to-reach hotkey and target the pets’ window to heal them. If one pet is taking all of the damage, have a last target hotkey set up as well, so you can alternate the cleric heal + your last target key quickly in order to keep a pet up under heavy fire. When a pet dies, you will have to use veterinary (a bandage) to res them. If your pet is a mule/noble, they may lose stats when they die. It’s important not to let your pets die, so make sure your hotkeys are set up so you can heal them properly. Make sure you keep all of their health windows up at all times (use ctr-shift, left mouse button drags and right clicks to hide names in order to drag all of their health windows out quickly).

Also, your gear when using mules/nobles should be meddable, sneakable, 100 LRC, 4 FC, 6 FCR, and as much LMC and +Mana Regen as you can get. I wouldn’t even worry about 70 to all resists at this point. You should not be getting hit at all. Your pets should take every single point of damage if you’re doing things correctly. Also, they are going to do infinitely more damage than you at this point, so you should just gear yourself to the point of keeping them alive at all costs. 100 DI and 65 SSI is great for your personal damage, but you’ll barely make a dent compared to your mules/nobles at this point of the game. You need to be able to keep your pets alive on balrons and peerless bosses so they don’t die and take stat losses. With lower level gear, you'll find that keeping up your pets in high damage situations, keeping up consecrate weapon, and spamming armor pierce on your yumi will drain your mana very quickly. Once you have GoC gear later and a few relayers and approach 30+ mana regen and have max LMC, it won't be an issue anymore.

If you’re still new to the shard, you have the ability to hit the Newbie Champ still. There’s a chance at getting tradeskill power scrolls. Some of them are a bit valuable but overall the newbie champ is a poor investment of time. If you do it a few times for fun and get lucky enough to get a 120 mining or something valuable, you'll probably want to sell it for some good coin unless you're a tradeskill buff. You can always buy one later when it's more valuable to you. The newbie champ spawns every 4 hours. To get to it, take the teleporter to Felucca and go West. Very easy to find. If you don’t have nobles/mules, you’ll need other players to help you kill it. It’s a good idea to invite other players regardless.

A better investment of time at this point would be regular champ spawns. You'll have to find out where they are through other players, and keep an eye out for invitations in world chat. Your likelihood at power scrolls will be smaller than other players do to the limited amount of damage you'll do, but if you get there early enough after it spawns you should still have a pretty good shot.

The best investment of your time at this point would be the doom gauntlet. Artifacts you earn through random chance will drop directly into your backpack. You probably want to take 5 mules to hold all of the gold you'll loot off the bosses' bodies. With 5 mules you'll be able to kill the entirety of the doom gauntlet on your own, but keep in mind something important: If you get enough players in the same doom gauntlet, you'll actually increase the number of each spawn. So you can kill 2 of each boss in each circuit, or even 3. Try to join people when they advertise that they want to go to the doom gauntlet, or try to invite other players to join with you. Your chance of getting doom artifacts does not decrease in any way by having more players with you. To the contrary, you'll gain more chances because the bosses will die faster, and again, if you have enough players, you'll gain more spawns too.

House/Bees: Now you’re starting to make some money. Well how can you make more? Beekeeping. It seems like a difficult undertaking for the inexperienced, but it’s really not that hard to do. It just requires a lot of clicking and some upfront money. After placing your house, I would recommend that you have about 200k to play around with to get your bees going.

To begin with, you need a house with ample space. You’re going to eventually have 24 beehives, 12 water pitchers and 8 campion flowers. Make sure all 24 hives are within 2 tiles of a witcher pitcher and 2 tiles of a campion flower. To get the campions, you may have to ask in [c if you can buy them from someone. You can lock a campion down, and then lock a water pitcher down on top of it.

You’ll buy the beehive deeds in Skara Brae from the beekeeper right next to where you teleport in. You’re going to need lots of potions and eventually bottles. You can buy potions from other players in potion keg form. When you place the beehive, the time you place it is the time it will reset on a daily basis. This is important. I find that my normal playtimes are in the mornings and later afternoons. So, I placed my beehives at 1pm. That way, I can work on my bees in the afternoon after they reset for the day, or if I can’t get online, I work on them the next morning before they reset. If you miss a day of working your bees, they take a lot more work to get them healthy again. Miss a few days in a row and they will quickly lose population and eventually die off completely. Working bees is a commitment!

There are different ways to do bees: I’m going to tell you my way which I’ve found foolproof. Someone else may tell you that you don’t need this, or that, or use less of this, or less of that, but I can tell you my way works flawlessly and the small amounts of excess here or there don’t add up to much.

I apply a greater strength potion to EVERY hive EVERY day. I apply a greater poison or greater cure potion if there is a minus sign to the left. I apply two greater agility potions to EVERY hive EVERY day as long as they are 30k population or higher. With these methods my bees all made it to 100k population in 20 days or less. They’ve all stayed at 100k population with daily maintenance. If you miss a day of maintenance, you will have to apply greater heal potions to get them back in order. If you follow my directions properly, your bees will always be “thriving” when under 100k population, and either “thriving” or “healthy” after they reach 100k.

You can check the wiki to get information on how to harvest your beeswax and honey. You will make roughly 1,000,000 gold per week on bees if you have 24 hives at 100k population.

220 Dex: The gamechanger. See the 220 Dex guide on the wiki. It has great advice on how to get there. If you aren’t sure what 220 Dex does: it allows you to use bandages to heal “instantly”. I quote that because a ton of high damage monsters hitting you at once can still technically kill you. You can use an EasyUO macro script (easier to intall than you think, just ask around if you need help) to automatically heal your character after you’re damaged. Your biggest worries once the script is running is being one-shot or running out of bandages. I placed 220 Dex at this stage in your progression because it’s not cheap. It’s a big gain to power but you have to prioritize it properly.

Imprisoned Pets / GoC Gear: Imprisoned Pets are the best pets on the shard at the moment. They do not suffer stat loss when they die, which is very important, particularly for the GoC quests if you choose to do them on your own. They also do nearly twice the damage output of nobles/mules which makes for faster farming. The drawback, is in their cheapest, undeveloped form, they have very low hit points and cost anywhere from 300k to over 1m if they have very high STR. To get their hit points up, you have to use ointments, which are farmable in Felucca or you can buy them from Exex. Do the math before you start ointmenting your imps and make sure you have the gold for it. I personally got my imps to 600hp each as soon as I could, and it made a tremendous difference. You can probably kill peerless bosses with unointed, or at least 200-250hp imps. Just remember, even if they’re unointed and they die, it doesn’t really matter much. They won’t lose anything. See the wiki for additional information on how to raise their stats and whatnot.

With somewhat developed imps, you can complete the entirety of the GoC quest. With the cost of the GoC nowadays being around 2-2.5m, it's not a good time investment to do the GoC, but personally I find it a lot of fun so I did it twice myself. You'll earn more gold per/hr doing other things, including the doom gauntlet runs we discussed earlier. But if you want to add some variety to your gameplay, do the quest yourself. I would highly recommend doing it at least once on your own so you get to know the different zones/bosses anyway. It will introduce you to a few peerless bosses that you probably haven't seen up until this point.

With 600hp imps, I was able to do the entire GoC quest even without a 220 dex suit equipped. The hardest mob, in my mind, actually was not the ice wyrm. It was Netopir in Sanctuary. It is not necessary to kill Netopir to complete the quest, however, as his item is droppable/sellable. Ice wyrm and Chef Paroxysmus are only hard until you have the technique down. Netopir is a long, grueling, heal intensive fight that takes upwards of 45 minutes when you have low damage output, which most people have at this stage of their character’s development. You’ll be spamming heals nearly non-stop for Netopir. His difficulty is that you will have no breaks for the time he’s alive. If you lose focus for 30 seconds, you’ll start losing pets. He gets easier as you develop your gear better with relayers and whatnot and can contribute a lot more damage alongside your pets. If you have 600hp imps and cannot defeat the entirety of the GoC quest, then you need to improve techniques. Gear is not holding you back.

Relayers: Here is where everyone wants to get to eventually. You can level up weapons to 100, pay 500 ED (equivalent of 25,000,000 gold), and wear your weapon in another slot. In other words, you can level a weapon to have 8 str, 8 dex, 8 stamina, +8 hit points, +8 stamina points, +8 mana points, +10 LMC, +10 HCI, +10 DCI, +20 LRC etc, and then wear it as an apron. Or a shirt. Or a sash. You can fill all of your slots that way.

Your first relayers will be your shirt/kilt/sash. After that you’ll already know on your own what you want to use. At the point of getting relayers, you’ll probably know enough about them to make this part of the guide relatively useless.

With that said, there’s a big debate to be had about WHAT to relayer first. And I’m going to take the unpopular approach here which I first saw advocated by respected players such as Devlin and a few others:

Do not level Bone Crushers when you’re just starting relayering.

BCs provide you with great DI to start, and have 10STR. A weapon without 10STR will cap out at 8STR when you level it, which means you can’t make up that 2STR difference that a BC gives you. Well, that 2STR difference amounts to 3hp. To level a BC, in addition to the item itself currently going for over 50 EDs (and may get closer to 100 based on the crazy demand lately), you will spend 200 EDs to remove its artifact tag. So you’re basically spending 200 EDs, plus the high cost of the weapon itself, for an extra 3hp.

The argument is that you’ll gain 51hp over 17 relayers. Well, great! But if you have 3 BCs as your only 3 relayers, and I don’t have any, then I’ll have 4 because I’ll have saved 600 EDs that you didn’t. Those 4 relayers will be a lot more useful than an additional 9hp. Additionally, at roughly 220 dex, which you’ll probably stay relatively close to as you equip relayers and replace your gimpy dex gear with GoC pieces in other slots, you’ll still have use of SSI for quite some time. Realistically you probably aren’t going to approach 240 dex permanently until you get to around 5 or 6 relayers.

I wouldn’t worry about BC relayers until you have those 5-6 relayers done, if at all. There are some really nice options out there with +DI/+SSI for your first 2 relayers to cap you on both. After that, you can decide what’s best. Some like Swords of Prosperity for the FC and luck (some say luck is useless), some like 14x4 resist items if you need resists. Some don’t really care what they use.

One thing to keep in mind, the tradeoff of not using a BC relayer is thus: you will not recoup your initial investment if you try to sell it. At best, you’ll get 500 EDs for it, which won’t give you a return on the time leveling it (or the EDs you spent if you paid someone to level it for you). Usually you can get at least 400 ED for a decent level 100 relayer though, regardless of what weapon it was. Just don’t mess up the stat spending on it.

So the BC vs. non-BC relayering debate comes down to this: gain power faster vs. better investing.

Personally, I’m not worried about where I’ll be in 17 relayers (that will take a long time). Once I get there, I’ll worry about replacing my relayers for more BCs/SoTs. Your mileage may vary. At 9 relayers (which cost me 4500 EDs), statwise I’ll be considerably ahead of the guy with 6 relayers of 6 BCs (which cost him 4200 EDs). If he passes me up by 17 cause of the extra 3hp per BC, then so be it.

[Aryck]

Better investing would mean better return on investment and with non-bc relayers you will lose a few 100 ED on the resale. It also isn't entirely about HP, with more strength you do more damage.

I wouldnt suggest anyone relayer anything but Bone Crushers, SOTs and Titans.

[Kevan]

The extra HP and STR only apply when the person relayering BCs catches up in relayers to the person not using BCs.

If a player spends 6000 EDs to get as many relayers as they can, their overall stats, including STR and HPs, would be greater by using non-BCs and SOTs than they would be using BCs and SOTs, because the BC relayer would have 2 less relayers than the other player who is not using BCs.

Example: Player A spends 6000 EDs on relayers and has 6 non-BC relayers and 6 SoT relayers. Player B spends 6000 EDs and has 4 BC relayers and 6 SoT relayers. Player A will have more STR, HPs, and if they save points properly on the items they use to relayer, will have better combinations of resists/LRC/LMC/RPD/EP/SDI/DCI/HCI.

It's only after you both reach 17 relayers, or 15-16 relayers if SOTs are removed from the equation completely, that the BC relayer player will have more STR/HP.

So yes, as I already mentioned, you're weighing return on investment vs. gain to power. I don't disagree with you on that part. The other part of the equation only matters once you're fully geared though, and realistically it will take the average player who doesn't donate religiously a year, maybe two, before they realize any return on investment in using BCs. Also, if at any point during that time period a new item is introduced, say in the new lands, that fills the void between BCs and Titan's Hammer, then the return on investment for a BC relayer shrinks even more.

Also, the extra STR and HPs gained from BCs once you near fully relayered status doesn't provide a large amount of additional benefit at this moment due to a ceiling on cutting edge content. The extra HPs may become more important with the release of the new lands soon, but again, those extra HPs do not get realized until the person relayering BCs is able to catch up to the other player on total relayers.

[Aryck]

I wouldn't suggest doing 34 relayers. Just do 17 by doing them right the first time. Get the stat the makes the most difference as high as possible since it doesn't cap, and everything else maxed, by relayering bone crushers / SOTs.

That is going to save you 1000s of ED that you will lose reselling the junky relayers you saved so much money on to begin with. If you want to waste a bunch of money to relayer everything twice and lose 1000s of ED in the process, then listen to Kevan.

Otherwise, just be patient, 200 ED more per relayer isn't that hard to farm once you are 220 dex and got some GOCs and what not. This way you don't lose the 1000s of EDs, but rather invest a little extra to do it right to begin with. You don't have to "catch up" if you are doing Bone Crushers, you are already ahead. You'll have maxed Damage Increase in 2 relayers, and have more strength than the non bc relayer when its all said and done, becoming more of a tank and dealing more damage. It doesn't matter who has the most stats the fastest and if you're patient you will be thankful later when youre buying 10 house slots and things you want instead of replacing all your relayers to be the best you can be.

And once you reach 10 relayers (of bone crushers) you can have all of your stats maxed if done properly and have RPD, SDI, mana, intel, dex, hp and str on every relayer and much more damage will be dealt than that of someone who chose the alternative.

Here is the math on doing it once with BCs:

10 Bone Crusher Relayers - 7k ED

And doing it twice:

10 NON BC - 5k ED - Resale loss - 2k EDish = 3k ED

Replace w/ BCs 7k ED - 3k ED (leftover) = 4k ED more needed

Total for non BCs - 5k ED + 4k ED = 9k ED

Simpy it comes down to this, Bone Crushers are worth the extra investment because you will have everything as you would without them plus more damage and more health.

[Kevan]

1) Resale value doesn't drop to 300 EDs. Haven't seen a level 100 relayer sell for 300 EDs in the last 4 months. Level 100 relayers sell for 400-450 EDs, and you wouldn't be losing it on 17 relayers because....

2) SOTs are more HPs so you wouldn't relayer 17 BCs anyway.

3) You ignored the other points regarding how far behind the player will be, ignoring that the average player will never reach enough relayers to gain the benefit of the BCs, or if they do it may take years. During those years the non-BC player will *always* be ahead. It also doesn't address the possibility of items being better than BCs that will further devalue them.

There is no right answer here, no matter how you would like to argue otherwise. I don't know if I'll ever get to 17 relayers so for my gameplay I'd rather take the extra STR/HP and other stats I have for the next few months or years. If I get to 17 there may not even be any content in which going from 400 to 450hp is going to make a difference, and I'll already have those 10 house plots for the cost of your 51 extra HPs.

[Aryck]

1. Every non BC i have ever sold was for around 300 ED so yeah they lose 200 or so easily, or more, I paid less than 300 for them.
2. My math was on 10, not 17.
3. I didn't ignore it. They wont be behind in the end, and that's what matters. Like I said, it isn't a race.

The right answer: Bone Crushers.

[Dramoor]

This whole post is wrong.

[Kevan]

They wont be behind in the end, and that's what matters. Like I said, it isn't a race.

I agree completely. It's not a race, it's about the journey, and in my journey I'll have better stats the whole time. If I reach 17 relayers some day, then I'll worry about the end.

Every non BC i have ever sold was for around 300 ED so yeah they lose 200 or so easily, or more, I paid less than 300 for them.

Fantastic! So I can have 17 non-BC relayers for 5100 EDs! If you can get me a level 100 relayer in every slot besides shirt/kilt/sash for 300 ED or less, I'll even give you a 50 ED finder's fee. Deal? Great.

Dramoor, a brilliant business man from Chicago once told me there are two people in the world: Problem Identifiers and problem solvers. If you would like to point out an area you feel is wrong, please do, and I would be happy to make alterations! You've been here a long time and obviously have a lot of knowledge over the years.

[Gaara]

The right answer: Bone Crushers.

There are no right or wrong answers, only opinions...

[Larsa]

This whole post is wrong.

Yup, go ahead... tell em!

I rather do it right the first time than save some ED's and re-do the whole process of leveling again. It is not a race as someone mentioned, besides... lets say, for example: you relayered a Wind's Edge and me a BC. You paid 500ED and me 700ED Assuming that you are not looking to replace this relayered wind's edge then yes...you saved more than me. Otherwise if you are going to replace it in a future date then this is what might happen:

1. You try to resale your relayered winds edge
a) Seen how the used relayer market is so unforgiving, you might get 300ED - 400ED tops
b) You might have a hard time selling it, cause it is not a relayered BC
c) Depending on how you distribute the points on the relayer it might be a tough sale. It is easier to buy a relayer from vets like CB, Marion, Lust, Alex, Alejandro, Dramoor, etc cause you know they will mostly have BC's on their gear and you are willing to build your gear around the stats it already have.

2. You indeed sold your relayered wind's edge (congratulations!)
a) Now, you need to get a BC, TH, or SOT
b) Apply wep change deed = 200ED
c) Level it or if you have lots of gold, find someone to do it for you.
d) Apply relayer deed = 500ED

So, at the end... you spent 700ED's + the lost of 100ED's from the relayer you replaced. And that is not adding the fact that you still need to level the weps or BC's before you can relayer it. And by the time you do... I am already on my 2nd BC while you still replace your non-BC relayer.

I also agree that there is no right or wrong on this post, just that perhaps I would have call it New Player "Fast" Guide to Glory and Riches. Cheers and good luck!

[Kevan]

Welcoming comments on other sections, by the way. When a player reachers the relayer part they'll have a better perspective to base their decisions upon.

[Aryck]

Welcoming comments on other sections, by the way. When a player reachers the relayer part they'll have a better perspective to base their decisions upon.

Sure.

First off if you have mules / nobles, doing the noob champ is a horrible way to make money. Either kill Balrons / Run the doom gauntlet over and over.

After you have your 220 dex gear, I cannot stress this enough DON'T waste your time doing the GOC quest. It takes over 3 weeks because of cool downs and even without cool downs, if you stayed in guantlet, 1 bone crusher would buy you a GOC now a days, and it doesn't take as long to get a BC/Jackals/SoT if you're staying in there a lot. So if you want to progress on your gear fast DONT farm the GOC just buy one. If you are farming balrons, you can easily pay for your GOC after a few days of farming.

FYI: If you do do the GOC Quest, Netopir is the easiest since you can buy his drop for like 5k as it is not account bound.

The right answer: Bone Crushers.

There are no right or wrong answers, only opinions...

Well that's just silly of course there is a right answer.

IMO 8 > 10

That is an opinion and THE WRONG ANSWER.

Fact of the matter is, me with 10 BCs and the rest SOTs is Greater Than you w/ 10 NON BC and the rest SoTs.

Enough said! Better is better people!

[Kevan]

Sure.

First off if you have mules / nobles, doing the noob champ is a horrible way to make money. Either kill Balrons / Run the doom gauntlet over and over.

After you have your 220 dex gear, I cannot stress this enough DON'T waste your time doing the GOC quest. It takes over 3 weeks because of cool downs and even without cool downs, if you stayed in guantlet, 1 bone crusher would buy you a GOC now a days, and it doesn't take as long to get a BC/Jackals/SoT if you're staying in there a lot. So if you want to progress on your gear fast DONT farm the GOC just buy one. If you are farming balrons, you can easily pay for your GOC after a few days of farming.

FYI: If you do do the GOC Quest, Netopir is the easiest since you can buy his drop for like 5k as it is not account bound.

I agree on the newbie champ being a horrible way to make money and also that doing the GoC yourself isn't worthwhile when it's selling for 2m lately. With that said, I also enjoyed both on my way up, and did my first two GoC items myself. I'll make a note of your points in both areas though, since you're correct.

Wasn't even aware Netopir's piece was tradeable. I'll make note of that as well and change the wording to state that his piece is probably the most difficult if you want to do the entirety of the quest on your own.

[Kevan]

Fact of the matter is, me with 10 BCs and the rest SOTs is Greater Than you w/ 10 NON BC and the rest SoTs.

Enough said! Better is better people!

You can take your 30hps and I'll keep my 2000 EDs. I'd rather give them away than spend them on 30hp. Again.. that's also if I ever get to 17 relayers.

I'd be curious to know what percentage of the population has reached 17 relayers anyway. I probably haven't seen more than 9 or 10 players with 17 relayers in the 4 months I've been here. Then again, maybe I don't hang out at Trinsic bank often enough.

[dillingham]

Hey! leave Trinsic bank out of this.