How to best build a character with limited resources?

[Roth]

I have a 17 necro and an 18 mage with limited plat and so-so gear. I felt the urge to casually play a meelee since my necro I'm currently duo leveling with someone, so I made a dwarf paladin. My question basically comes down to, if you started on this server with no armor/plat as a meelee, what would be the best way to start gearing up?

As far as I know, the only two practical options would be to level smithing then make banded armor myself, or to try to scrounge up plat for the cheapest gear I can find in commonlands. Are there any other options I'm missing, and what would be the best way to go about doing this? Obviously a non gear reliant class would be better, but if you HAD to do this, what would you do and what would the cost be? Also, how would you start making plat? I'm not asking for specific plat farms, just some general areas that are fine would help a lot.

[Safon]

You missed a third practical option: See the Baron

[Donuts]

Try the sisters camp in lessar faydark, they drop bronze weapons which vendor for plat. Easy camp with your necro or mage. About 70pp/hr.

[Sakuraba]

you could walk him to LGUK ent and gear him out with shin gaunts and shin greaves

[Gustoo]

Donuts has it right. It costs about 100pp to get to Banded level smithing skills, which means in about 2 hrs of leveling up and an hour or two of actually smithing, you should be able to get yourself a set of banded at lower levels. If not..you will find ringmail in unrest when you level up, and I think bronze there too.

[webrunner5]

The trouble with doing Banded is how many sets you really going to sell? Not counting you are in the Tunnel making nothing till you sell a set. As a Paladin it will take you about 3 years to get to 60 fighting , let alone doing Tradeskills. Good luck with that.

[sykotic]

Try the sisters camp in lessar faydark, they drop bronze weapons which vendor for plat. Easy camp with your necro or mage. About 70pp/hr.

This.

And stick with one char for a bit, it will be easier to farm plat when your higher lvl.

I wouldn't count on trade skills making you money for a long while, though I never really got into them.

[Ferok]

Go to unrest and auction for small bronze. It'll cost you less than banded and obviously has more AC. Most players there will be all too happy to offload the weight of it for a little over the vendor price. Its a good place for the paladin once he hits 12-14, and your mage or necro would do fine there as well.

Good luck.

[jarshale]

Get your necro to 24 and go farm the iksar berserker club in kurns tower. Easiest source of plat I've found at that level. Plus you can farm enough bone chips while you're there to last you til 60.

[Picked]

If I was you I would go to Ocean of Tears and visit the undead isle. There is gargoyle spawns all over and they can drop eyes that sell for 9-10pp each. They are level 19-20 so if you're a necro you should be able to handle them at 18 or 19.

Until then I would do sisters in Lfay like Donut said. Good source of plat for the level. Only problem is the weapons weigh a lot and if you can't sell to the kelethin merchants nearby then it becomes a long haul back and forth with gate/running back.

The good thing about Paladins and Sk's they don't require expensive weapons to operate. They help the cause but these tanks can hold sufficient aggro with minimal twinking. Deck your Paladin out in bronze and get him a shield and a decent 1h like a green jade broadsword and get after it.

[Slave]

Most people level their mage or necro to 34 so they can do actually valuable camps like hill giants to twink their melee alts with.

[Roth]

Thanks guys for the responses. I think the suggestion on bronze armor was probably my favorite idea. I think I'll give that a shot.