I forgot how hard the struggle is at newbie levels. Does anybody have any recommendation on where I should be leveling to get up to at least level 4 pretty quick? I'm slugging along right now at level 2 with a mage/necro/shaman trio. Tried hanging out in EFP, but that was to slow, so I went to steamfont and those kobolds are eating me alive lol. Thanks for any suggestions
early low levels are pretty tough, you'll just need to stick it out. IMO qeynos is pretty good because there's tons of trash right next to the PoK book... you probably should just focus on the lvl 1 necro pet and melee with the others as you get to level 4 where the mage pet will then begin to do work
Make a friend. Get some buffs for ur necro pet and get maybe a velious junk weapon so it will hit like a tank. Then lay waste to newbie area. Drakel forged hammer is good one i think. I have a few extra, but i wont be on tonight.
That leads to another question. Since my pets are doing all tanking and damage, how do I raise my defense skills. Can I duel my pets to raise skills here?
Defense skills? Let shaman tank more. Mage and Necro .... Dont get hit. Defense skills should be zero of ur worries. If you are getting hit enough to matter, ur good as dead. So get hit less.
You mentioned giving high dmg weapons to lowbie pets. Does that increase their unwielded hit value? I've just been giving my mage pets daggers since lvl 4 am I doing it wrong?
If you want to work up your defense skill, spend a little time now and then tanking mobs that con light blue or very low dark blue. Make sure your agility is not too low while you're tanking (80+ is safe). Defense skillups can only happen when a mob misses you. The miss-or-hit calculation depends (loosely) on a comparison between the mob's innate chance to hit and your defense skill. As mobs get higher level, their innate chances to hit increase, so if you level without working on defense eventually you'll find yourself almost never getting missed. If you never get missed, then your defense skill can never go up.... It's a vicious cycle. Most people handle defense on casters by just ignoring it. Once they're high level, they spend a few hours letting a summoned pet beat on them while another toon heals. That works too.
Don't forget that lvl 1 mobs give virtually no xp. Thanks to the xp formula including [mob level]^2, a lvl 2 mob gives 4x the xp of a lvl 1, while a lvl 3 mob gives 9x the xp of a lvl 1. It can be a rough going until those lvl 1 mobs turn green and you know for sure you're not getting them. Also, at those super low levels, the initial proximity aggro is really hard to overcome. Use this to your advantage. At lvl 2, a war doesn't tank any better than a wizard, and that 1/tick hp regen really does a lot. Alternate which char you pull/tank with, so you're utilizing the hp regen of all 3 chars. Inner fire is a more mana efficient heal than minor healing, and you'll also never have to buff with it again if you're healing with it. Minor healing is much quicker to cast though, so still good for those panic moments.
Weapons do not modify pet melee damage at all, other than forcing them to dual wield if they are not already. Weapons with procs are the only way to increase a dual wielding pet's damage output.
Weapons do modify the pet melee damage for low level pets. Pets will use a weapon and deal weapon damage x2 as their max hit, unless weapon damage x2 is lower than their normal max hit in which case their melee damage is unaffected. A level 1 necro pet has a normal max hit of 10. Give it a Rusty Two-Handed Sword (damage 9), and its max hit will be 18. Give it a Drakkel Forged Sledgehammer (damage 22) as Haynar suggests, and it should hit for 44. Obviously if the pet is using a 2h weapon, it will not dual wield. Consequently, by the time pets start dual wielding when given 2 one handed weapons, their natural damage output is better than it would be by giving them a junk 2h.
I STRONGLY recommend that you take the time to raise defensive skill to the cap when you're like level 4 or 5. Tank level 1 NPCs. It becomes a nightmare to raise at high levels if you have no skill in it. Even if you ignore it after that point, it won't be nearly as hard to raise as it would be from 0 or 1 skill. Stats matter more the lower your level is, so they matter a whole lot at level 1. Strength means higher damage hits and agility grants large AC bonuses at that level. Make an Ogre Warrior and watch him crush level 1 NPCs. Warriors of course have better melee combat stats. Agility and Dex are supposed to help melee skill raises but don't here. (yet) Also War skill caps are higher of course, so if the War is sklll capped then the combat performance will be a lot better than that of a Wizard's.
Aside from lower delay weapons, I don't think so. However our skill raises tend to be easier than what they should be anyway.
Isn't there some "practice" weapons that had low delay people used to buy that had really low dog and delay for this purpose??
Piercing is hands down the easiest: Fine Steel Dagger (3/19) usable by anyone that can pierce, and ofc is one of the easiest items you could possibly try to get lol. 1hb has a few fast weaps but they hit harder, the Iksar Berserker Club (7/18) and Blackjack (7/21). 1hs has the Gnoll Hide Lariat (3/20) (war/rogue/bard/ranger), nothing too great for the other 1hs classes for this purpose. There are better weapons for particular race/class combinations, but those are pretty much it for very fast tradeable all/all type 1 handers.
Smithing chisel for those other pallies that wanted to raise piercing back in Kunark. Not many choices for pallies out there during that era, and this one was easy to get. http://www.takproject.net/allaclone/item.php?id=7052