New player tips

[whodats]

Hello everyone! New to the server, old eq player. It's been about 14 yeas though and I never played a shaman on live. I'm going to be duo with a monk (my wife) ATM were both working with what we get to drop from mobs. Any tips for a shaman or new player in general?

[Jimjam]

Unless you've received hp/ac buffs from higher level players you want to use Inner Fire as your heal spell instead of minor healing.

Don't feel compelled to buy every spell that is available to you; some spells are of limited use or are replaced after only a few levels.

Spend your first few levels killing decaying skeletons; bank bone chips to sell to higher level players at a later date. Looted cloth armor is a good starting point for AC for the first few levels and a rusty two handed hammer will be good melee dps for you initially. Any cracked staffs you find will help your bankroll.

I'll assume your class combo means you are lizardmen. Move on to the field of bone spiderling caves when you can. It has a high concentration of mobs, is relatively safe and you should save up your spiderling silks to sell to other players (regular spider silks may as well be sold to vendors as they don't carry as much value to the player market).

If you are partnering with your wife I assume you are going to pool your finances? The best bang for your bucks will be to upgrade her weapon options. This will improve her dps (so more kills: more xp/cash). If you chose to go to kurns tower it may be worth staying there til you can get both characters an iksar berserker club.

Try to keep your bank stocked well enough to be able to afford a couple of key spells every few levels.

To begin with, don't waste plat on +stat equipment. Stats tend to do very little, except strength which will help you carry more and will improve dps slightly. +wis doesn't give much bonus at lower levels and you are better off getting +mana if you want a bigger mana pool. +hp will give you a little more wiggle room in tight encounters.

Last time I leveled up a toon it seemed like you didn't need much worn AC to get the maximum benefit for your level, but there has recently been changes to the AC system so the situation on this may have changed.

Just a few thoughts, I'm sure others can add extra suggestions or point out any errors in mine.

[Estu]

Here's the newbie guide on the Wiki for new players in general: http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie

In terms of playing a shaman specifically, here are some tips.

Once you get SoW at level 9, always keep it up on yourself and your wife since it will save your ass countless times.

In terms of what to spend your mana on, at low levels you mainly want to heal and buff your wife and use root for crowd control (if multiple mobs are pulled, use root to make sure you're only fighting one at a time). The most important buffs for a monk are strength, regen, HP, and haste. Stamina is also useful. Dex is useful if she has a weapon that procs something (i.e. a weapon that casts a spell on hit). You don't really need to keep yourself buffed up, although it can be useful as a timer so you know when your wife's buffs are going to expire (although she can just tell you this herself).

Later on, your slows get more powerful and become extremely useful. I would experiment casting slows once you get into your 30s and 40s. Before that, they still take a lot of mana relative to your level, but don't slow the mob very much.

Once you get meditate (level 8), you probably shouldn't be meleeing stuff anymore; it's more efficient to meditate and use extra mana for nukes. You should never be at 100% mana; always use your mana for something, or you're making those med ticks go to waste.

In terms of what mobs to target, you guys should go after mobs that are dark blue cons. Higher cons are much more likely to resist spells and do heavy melee damage to you.

Once you get regen and cannibalize, you should never be at 100% HP or mana. Cannibalize is a class-defining spell for shamans and provides an excellent boost to mana regen. Don't heal yourself in order to cannibalize more; you don't get as much mana back as if you just used that mana to cast spells in the first place.

Once you get your pet, it can be useful for adding a little DPS or a little crowd control, but it's not very powerful and I wouldn't spend mana buffing it (there are different opinions on this, though).

You get poison and disease DoT spells; these are not going to be very useful in a duo with a monk, since the monk will probably kill the monsters before your DoTs do their full damage. They are useful for soloing, though.

In terms of what zones to EXP in, as a duo you should be able to handle dungeons. Dungeons are better options than outdoor zones in that they have a better ZEM (zone experience modifier: every kill gives more EXP) and better loot is dropped. The flip side to this is that dungeon monsters are harder to single-pull and are often casters (depending on the dungeon). Duoing in a dungeon will put hair on your chest and make you a better player, and it will help your wife master the most important monk technique, which is using Feign Death to split pulls. If dungeons are too tough, you can always wimp out and do an outdoor zone [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also, be sure to bind wherever you are EXPing to save time on corpse runs. You get Bind Affinity at level 14. You can bind yourself pretty much anywhere, but you can only bind your wife at cities and a few select other areas (e.g. gypsy camp in North Karana).

Don't be afraid to go to far-away zones. There are plenty of druids and wizards on this server happy to port newbies around for free if you ask nicely and explain that you just started playing. "/ all druid 39 60" and "/ all wizard 39 60" are your friends. Prioritize players who are not obviously busy (i.e. someone in East Commonlands or West Commonlands is more likely to be free to port you than someone in, say, Karnor's Castle).

Be aware of your race, class, and religion, and the fact that there are plenty of cities and NPCs out there that will kill you on sight depending on those things. Con (right click) everything.

[Daldaen]

Gonna disagree with some of what Estu posted.

Pre-24, the only buff you should bother casting on melee is SoW.

After 24, once you have Canni/Regen, you can add Regen to the mix.

Later on SoW/HP/Regen/STR/STA become more useful but I'm talking 30-40s. Before then stats like STA/STR are pretty minimal in their benefit, over the course of their duration you're better off casting 2 heals probably.

If you have a decent weapon, I'd suggest meleeing over meditating though. Let your wife's monk pull while you meditate and when stuff is in camp melee it. The amount of mana you med up through a fight, will be spent healing the monk through longer fights cause you aren't helping damage it. If you were meleeing though it may die before the mob does enough damage to warrant another heal or two. Fighting and healing less or medding for heals will likely leave you at the same mana at the end but one will go faster.

Getting ports... What he says is true but meh. If this is your return to classic on your first characters I suggest making some of those trips on foot for nostalgia purposes of the adventure that was classic EQ. I still remember my run from Qeynos to Kelethin back in 99. I had a similar run on my P99 Druid before he got ports, to Unrest I think.

2nd/3rd characters yea sure get your cross continent ports. Also people can port as low as 29. Level 60s lose the ability to port though *nods*. It's one of the benefits of being level 60!

The rest of his advice is pretty solid IMO.

[Estu]

Don't want to get in a back-and-forth over minutiae, Daldaen, but I would just like to note that since he is new to the server he is rather unlikely to have a weapon good enough to justify standing instead of meditating.

[whodats]

Thanks so much for the tips guys was a good refresher and learnd some new things

[Clark]

Ec tunnel buffs 1-20. Oasis crocs 12-18ish. Don't worry too much about farming until 44-49+.