Newbie here. Getting my arse handed to me.

[whytemane]

Hey guys. Just deciding to finally post here after coming back from YEARS ago. Finally decided to make a character on Blue. Unfortunately Classic's difficulty to newbies has gone ham on beating me into the floor time and time again. I've died....20ish times so far and just RECENTLY made it to level 5. I barely know anything about this game, and only so far gotten to level 5 because of the know how and generosity of a few people I've run into.

To sum it all up, got some tips and tricks for a lowbie monk that's dying too often?

[stakha]

What's your in game name and where are you leveling (or trying to at least hehe)? If I catch you online when I'm on I'll try to help you out a bit.

[eqgmrdbz]

Are you a EQ virgin, or just first time playing classic EQ?

I would say read the wiki, and then do the newbie quests for getting plat and exp. Are you wearing armor? get some armor, you can also make armor by working on tailoring. Make sure to put points into your mele skills. Nothing much else to say, just have to find what you need to do to get from A to B.

[Stormlight]

Consider (/con or "c") mobs before you engage them. Someone as low as you shouldn't be dying that much unless you're attacking things that are even or higher (white, yellow, red). Also: http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie

[Estu]

Read this: http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie

Some tips on how not to die as a monk (most of these aren't just for monks BTW):

1) Con everything. This means right click on it or target it and press 'c'. If it's green, it won't give you worthwhile EXP. If it's white (even con), yellow, or red, it's too hard to fight solo. If it's blue, generally speaking it's doable and worthwhile (but as a rule, avoid casters, especially if you're soloing).

2) Pull monsters you're fighting to safe spots. You don't want to deal with adds (additional monsters attacking you) while you're fighting something; you want to fight monsters one at a time. Get a monster's attention, then run somewhere that there aren't a lot of monsters.

3) If you've bitten off more than you can chew, you can outrun a monster using strafe-run. You can do this by holding CTRL, up arrow, and left or right arrow. You'll move a little faster and the monster won't be able to hit you, allowing you to get to a guard or a zone line. This only works if you're not below 20% HP or so; if you get below 20% HP, your run speed goes down (as well as your armor class).

4) Be careful with Mend. At low levels, it will fail a lot. Sometimes when it fails, it will hurt you. The last thing you want to do is kill yourself with a skill that's supposed to help you. To be safe, I would reserve Mend for times when you are not actively fighting a mob and can afford to take an HP hit if it fails. Use it as much as possible, though, because once you skill it up to 100 or so, it's invaluable.

5) Keep track of where you die. Hitting /loc when you know you're about to die will give you your coordinates so you can track down your corpse.

6) Bandages can be expensive during your early levels, but once you can afford them, buy some and use Bind Wound to get your HP from below 50% up to 50% after a fight. At high levels with enough Bind Wound skill, you'll be able to used it to go up to 70%.

7) Farm up some platinum and buy yourself a weapon(s). Pretty much any cheap weapon you find in EC is going to be leaps and bounds better than anything you can find on your own at low levels. You should aim to farm up somewhere between 50 and 200 PP for starter weapons. The newbie guide has tips on how to do this. It's not strictly necessary but it will make your life a lot easier, especially if you're soloing.

8) Group whenever possible, so your groupmates can help you not die :)

9) Pay attention to your weight. If you're carrying more than 14 units worth of items, then your AC is going to take a hit (this only happens with monks). The hit is bigger the more you go over that cap. This difference in AC is more important at mid to higher levels than at lower levels, but basically the way to keep your weight down is to destroy low-value coin you loot (silver and copper) and avoid looting heavy items like weapons and armor unless you really need to.

Basically, with the above tips, you should never die in a solo setting. Also, once you hit level 19 (I think it's 19, anyway) you get Feign Death, which is a class-defining ability and lets you die even less, as well as do a bunch of other neat stuff.

[whytemane]

Thanks guys. If ya wanna hang out in-game I'm a level 5 human monk, named Teriburr. Unfortunately, as of getting on just a few minutes ago: I found a group, but got no xp. Which sucks. :/

[phacemeltar]

1. kill skeles until you have a full set of cloth armor.

2. next step is to find a couple of weapons with very low delay.

3. try to only kill dark blue cons, as the white-yellow cons will probably kill you very quickly.

4. once you can kill bears, hunt them exclusively until you get a stash of high quality bear skins(the other skins/pelts are worthless except to vendor) that you can then turn around and sell very quickly to players for 30pp each.

5. your next step is up to you, you can either:
a. use your bear pelt fund to buy a very good monk weapon (do a /w all monk to find someone to ask on opinions here) for cheap.

or

b. use your bear pelt fund to buy something at a good price, which you can then turn around and sell for more money. in EC you can hunt more bears in the meantime to supplement this fund.

make sure to watch your weight! if you become too encumbered, your armor will drop substantially.. and monks dont have a huge amount of this to begin with. read the monk wiki (http://wiki.project1999.com/Monk#Weight_Penalty_Guide) page for more info.

[Captiv8]

Master Wu's trance stick is a good monk wep. Will last you a long time to. Should be able to pick up two for ~300

[whytemane]

Well. For now I'm pretty much stuck in Greater Feydark at Crushbone, trying to level there. But yeah. I've gotten to use a friends Master Wu's Trance Stick....Friggen love that thing. Dual Wielding them would be monstrous.

[Velerin]

Always have an escape plan. One of the things that made classic EQ so special (and frustrating) was the huge penalty for death. Pick your fights carefully. Better to run to a guard or zone than die. Don't wait until you're too low to run, if you see the fight going sour bolt (and strafe run) quick.

[whytemane]

Decided to try out a Cleric. Deciding to try them out while I relax from dying, often, on my monk. On now as Teriveni.

[Daywolf]

Decided to try out a Cleric. Deciding to try them out while I relax from dying, often, on my monk. On now as Teriveni.
Well.. a little more gear dependent. Not too bad though if you are only going to heal early on, but you will still need something for heal aggro when the pug has no clue...and they never do. If you run the mail delivery quest (felwithe to kelethin), you'll make ~50pp from lvl1-5. Then find someone selling bronze plate for 1pp an AC. Also keep something for your most important spells. Once in CB you can collect CB belts and sell them to players for 3pp ea, fill in the rest of the plate and your less needed spells. Later, move to Unrest and clean up, good start for a lvl14 cleric, some good gear drops as you progress.

ps. just don't say you rolled a high elf cleric :P
If you rolled a dwarf, there is a low-level armor quest... I think late teens. I've never done it, but it's on the wiki. I couldn't use it with my halfling cleric, which is fine as the trade-off was getting hide and sneaksis which is golden. I had the high elf on early live, it's difficult until later leveling as you can gear out their horrible shortcomings. A lot of people roll high elf due to the high wisdom, but really it just doesn't matter. When you are in groups and healing, rare to get to full mana anyway. So it's sort of a moot point having high wisdom, really.

Anyway, if you do run the mail quest there (going postal), and you see my name on /who and in gfay (I go there a lot), just send a tell mentioning you are running the mail and I'll drop you a sow on your way to the bard guild for the drop off. I usually do if I notice people running that.

[Estu]

I have to dispute the above advice. Clerics, even dwarven clerics, are constantly beset by weight issues. Getting a full suit of bronze is an awful choice that will lead to you being encumbered all the time. What happens if you're encumbered all the time? You take a lot more damage and die more. Also, clerics are certainly less gear-dependent than monks. You can level a cleric basically naked and you'll be fine. There are ways to manage heal aggro (e.g. waiting until the tank and CC have established aggro/CC to heal, or rooting stuff that starts wailing on you); it shouldn't be a constant issue. If you are gearing your cleric, you should focus more on WIS/mana than AC anyhow, and you can find pieces that don't weigh a lot for that.

[Jimjam]

Clerics should focus exclusively on charisma to avoid those crit resists on pacify... okay, maybe not :P

[Daywolf]

I have to dispute the above advice. Clerics, even dwarven clerics, are constantly beset by weight issues. Getting a full suit of bronze is an awful choice that will lead to you being encumbered all the time. What happens if you're encumbered all the time? You take a lot more damage and die more. Also, clerics are certainly less gear-dependent than monks. You can level a cleric basically naked and you'll be fine. There are ways to manage heal aggro (e.g. waiting until the tank and CC have established aggro/CC to heal, or rooting stuff that starts wailing on you); it shouldn't be a constant issue. If you are gearing your cleric, you should focus more on WIS/mana than AC anyhow, and you can find pieces that don't weigh a lot for that.
Hmm? My cleric wasn't encumbered at low levels wearing plate. Not sure what you are talking about. My untwinked cleric is never encumbered... and with good str he melee's well enough to solo when I want to (yeeeah, I don't just stick wisdom items on him). Definitely works well in duo's, knocking down mobs one after another. I played a capped cleric on live six years from around launch, then on PEQ from there (old original EMU server here), and now here on p99 leveling a cleric. Maybe you are thinking loot hoarder or loot ninja? You'll have enough to carry a weight reduction bag or two and fill it with some valuables (gems are always good), but don't expect to be grabbing everything in sight, not for a while anyway. If you encumber, just keep your agility above 75. If you have a tank friend, dump some of your loot onto him until you guys break camp.