If you wanna play a monk, there are some amazing weapons you can find for very cheap in EC - look up wu's quivering staff and master wu's trance sticks on the p99 wiki. Regardless of which class you play, 5/55 rings (platinum fire wedding ring) are also a great investment. You'll need to save up a couple hundred plat to afford these items, which you can do using, for example, the methods detailed here:
http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie#Platinum