Monkey Gear

[Mzy12345]

Also apologize not trying to derail thread but I would also make sure you have a good Bind Wound Macro to use in battle. If you search the forums you will see quite a few threads on them. It will make a bigger difference in how fast you can level than a lot of gear will.

[Maliant]

You can't twink a monk well with only 1k. They are one of the most gear dependent classes in the game. A fungi basically makes or breaks a monk, you will level up about 4 times as fast if you get one, which is why I spent a week farming seafuries before rolling my monk.

[Jimjam]

Maliant, did you play a monk without a fungi too? I've not done either (or at least not beyond the early levels), so I can't speak of first hand experience.

However, I've seen plenty of Fungiless monks soloing in their 50s, so I don't think it is really a case of 'make or break', rather 'make or supermode'.

Mzy12345 is right that good battle bandaging is huge.

Once you hit 201+ skill and are turtled up to avoid interrupts you will be self healing for around 80 damage every 10 seconds, without sacrificing melee dps. It's been huge for any character I've done it on.

I have a /stand hotkey, I've found it to be generally useful. I also have a hot key that bandages. Tab is set to toggle between targeting myself and my previous target.

In battle I hit tab, bind wound, tab, stand, auto attack. If I'm feeling dextrous I turn off attack before starting this process.

You could make it more automated with the following:

/doability #
/stand
/attack on

That way you just need to tab, macro, tab. Obviously you need to set the hash to the correct number and may need to add in small /pauses to deal with lag.

[Mzy12345]

I have played with no fungi through level 30 and found it very easy and fun before I got one. I had 2 Jade Maces until 20 (better combos I know just didn't want to screw with EC) and then a Peacebringer and a low end haste item.

Overall, I think 1k is plenty to get started and enjoy the class while not being underpowered at all.

[Maliant]

I've just seen and talked to so many low level monks who have such a hard time leveling without any gear. That's why I always advise people against making a monk or warrior as their first class. Granted this isn't a first class and you will have some gear to work with. I just found the game so much easier by making a necro first class and leveling him to 60 so that I could have a great farmer to buy all the toys for my other classes, because after doing the grind once it's less enjoyable. 50-60 as an iksar monk is hard enough, not like a necro where you can solo to 60, so you may as well make the early levels as easy and enjoyable as possible imho.