Couple Questions

[caitiff]

Hello, First time on the boards Not exactly sure if this is the right spot to ask but its what i saw. I'm still on the first land and just wondering what I should spend my skill points on. I currently have:
.:. Skill Points .:.
Fight: 70
Magic: 104
Craft: 75
Harvest: 45
My lvls are 30 Melee fighting, 20 magic, 13 craft, 18 harvest. The current actions and upgrades that I have are:

.:. Actions .:.
Fight:
Increase Damage 1-3
Self Heal Life 1-3
Use Item Enchantment
Accurate Attack 1-3
Magic:
Acid Damage 1-2
Craft:
Zorai Armour Crafting 1-2
Harvest:
Basic Prospecting
5M Range Prospection
50m Deposit Tracking
Prospection For Only Fine materials
Prospection For Only Choice materials
Prospection Counterpart 2
Basic Extraction
Harmful Extraction 20
Extraction Counterpart 1-3

.:. Upgrades .:.
Fight:
Constitution Training 1-7
Strength Training 1-7
HP Credit Upgrade (2)
Magic:
Intelligence Training 1-5
Harvest:
Dexterity Training 1-4


I'm not really sure where to go w/ crafting as it takes so many points to do anything.
Magic i think i want to go mainly defensive and stuff for teams. Not too sure though.
Fighting I want to go melee for sure, but not sure 1 or two handed weaps.
And harvest I may have learned the wrong ones and stuff such as "prospecing only choice" instead of "prospecting choice and lower" which someone was saying was better.

Basically any advice on what to spend my points on would be great. I do plan on getting the sap crystal 1 and 2 w/ my magic.

I guess ill stop typing now and wait ;p Thank you for any help you can give (also, should i head to the mainland now? or would you suggest i wait till a higher lvl in an area?) Thanks

[trosky]

Well its directly linked to what you want to do with your char.

I would always start by maxing my HP, SAP, Stamina and Focus.

Then it depends on what you want to do.

For melee :

If you want to use 2 handed weapons, i would suggest getting attack after dodge.

If you use single handed get attack after parry.

Increase damage and accurate attack are also good.

For magic, if you want to be a support mage :

HP, Sap and stamina healing.

I dont use defensive affliction so i cant say much about those. I know fear is very usefull if you want to do some nuking, stun is also great.

Craft :

choose what you want to specialize in, everything in crafting is usefull. This is more a personnal choice.

Harvest :

At low lvl i only used :

prospection, increase range and angle.

choose between harmfull or light and get all the direct improvement to it.

You can keep your 50m tracking for a long time, your points are better spend elsewhere when your low lvl.




There is no useless skills, there are some useless combination. Try to stick with a few choices you like and always bring those up when you can.

[caitiff]

Thank you. This confirmed some thinking and all and taught me some other.

I would always start by maxing my HP, SAP, Stamina and Focus.

This is what I have been doing and plan on doing all up

For melee :
If you want to use 2 handed weapons, i would suggest getting attack after dodge.
If you use single handed get attack after parry.
Increase damage and accurate attack are also good.

I guess ill have to decide on what i want to stay with, 1 or 2 handed. Could you or someone else explain parry better and how it works in the game? thx And i currently have been raising increase damage and accurate atk as often as i can

For magic, if you want to be a support mage :

ok, thx is there any magic that is for self defense type? like raises defence and all?

Craft :

That I figured. Im going to go with armor I believe. But not really sure what type. Is there a type of armor that is lacking in the mainland? like not many ppl doing high end medium helmets or whatever. And what's the adv/disadv to light/medium/heavy?

Harvest :

ok, thx


Thank you for your response

[madnak]

Skills are hard at low levels because there are no branches to farm skill points on.

For fight 2-handed is, frankly, much better. Roughly double the damage means a lot. But go 1h for style if you like, you should do alright. Definitely keep your increased damage and all stats up. Beyone that it does depend a bit on style. First thing I did was got hp credit and accurate attack, and used both increased damage and accurate attack. That worked well for me. If you're going to use piercing, ignore armor is a must - but I'd wait a bit on that. Attack after dodge/parry also helps a lot.

Bleed is marginally effective, and slow is okay but shouldn't be too high on your list of priorities. If you will be soloing self heal life should be at the top of your list. Also get melee protection aura as soon as you can, it's expensive but worth it. If you plan on getting into groups get taunt right away. You'll absolutely need it at higher levels. Taunt will not only allow you to tank, but also to pull mobs without drawing added aggro. The aim stanzas are cheap but of limited use. I would recommend waiting until you are higher before getting those. Shielding can be useful, but only if you have a shield. Also in groups reducing damage tends to be silly (not only are healers super-powered but the big hits often come from special attacks that deal far more than a shield can absorb). Berserk is a terrible skill, unless you have a ton of spare I wouldn't get it. Metabolism and balance depend on your style, definitely if you're soloing but not so much if you're a grouper. Still they are useful, so catch up on them sometime. If you plan on ranged get hit rate + (and aim too), but otherwise wait on that. Sounds like you don't.

For magic: Get sap gift and stam gift as well as the heal abilities. It's a common healer mistake to neglect those - don't do it. Wisdom is so-so, I always keep it up but it's okay to skimp on a bit. I can't comment on anything other than heal because I'm a bit low with magic. You should have plenty of skill points though, magic gives more elbow room than the other branches.

Harvesting? Keep up on the quality, source time, number of sources (they last longer if you get more than one, so you can harvest twice with each prospect), rate, prospect range, prospect angle, focus, and counterparts. Speed isn't bad either. When you can get regional prospecting specializing get those right away. Also get the care plans soon - only the first is 30, the rest are 10, and they come in very handy.

Don't worry about tracking until later. You won't be able to find the mats very easily anyhow (it doesn't pinpoint the location, just gets you within 20m or so). Also mat spec is probably not a good idea - you can find sources (or just ask around) for the mats you want easily enough through trial and error, those locations won't change (but may be inaccessible due to weather/etc). The extraction specs only help reduce explosions, great if you're using harmful but not so much if you use gentle. Choice and lower can be great for grinding mats but you don't need it if you know where to find the mats. I'd hold off on excellent for awhile, it can be hard enough to keep up on harvesting at first, and you probably won't have much use for excellent mats until level 50 at a bare minimum.

I don't craft as much as some, but I'd recommend farming skill points as much as you can. Get heavy helmet/vest/pants and focus on that until you reach level 50. Also get diadem for jewelry. Ranged and melee crafting are more open, you can gain levels on anything but bigger plans are usually easier. Get one plan and stick to it until 50. Depending on where you're putting your focus/hp/etc points, you'll have more or less to spare. And for that it depends on what you want to do with craft. If you plan to specialize you might get a lot of the relevant plans. If you intend to generalize get all 6 of the craft skills up to 60. You'll need stat upgrades at some point, focus and hp will have the highest demand. At level 50 expensive new plans will become available and you will want those if you plan to sell at lower levels.

Soon skill points will get much easier and you'll be able to mix and match more. At 50 every tree branches so you can get many more levels that can be spent on anything in that branch (especially for harvest, which divides from one group into 5).

[lyrah68]

In general, ALWAYS boost stats and their regen, then boost things that you actually USE. For melee, that would be increased damage, and the skill that is for the weapon you use (ignore armor, bleed, stun etc), for crafting...what do you want to make, for foraging I tend to use both ALL gentle, and a mixture of aggressive and gentle stanzas (depending upon the node), Magic I would get heal life, acid damage and cold damage ASAP.

On forage, I would hold OFF on the ONLY stanzas (prospecting for ONLY choice materials etc) until you have UPTO stanzas for all of them, I goofed this up on my Tryker alt and for the moment she wastes ALOT Of mana looking for the right material nodes.

[josephm]

I would say stats are a huge factor until you have a good secondary skill. After this, I'll usually lag a level or two in regen because I'm busy gathering other stanzas.

If you want to be an effective pure one handed fighter for instance, make sure that you specialize your stanzas because you need to keep pouring points into stats to stay buff.

Don't get prospection specs until you have 300+ meter tracking. Even with supreme only I only find excellent consistantly at 500M

Prospection speed stanzas are nice. The more time you save, the more times you harvest. After the 2nd or 3rd there's a huge increase in pts required. I wasted 20 points getting the 60 credit speed. I'm not going to use it for a long long time. 30 levels i think.

I'm 128 harvest and my highest prospect is 10 meters. I'll increase it eventually but I hardly use 10 meters anyways. I know my sources pretty well, especially my grind sources so it's not a big deal.

Crafting anything is fine. if you get all the plans and Q60, you can run a lot more fame missions that repop every two hours. So between killing hard kips etc for your hunt missions, leveling, grinding craft etc, you get a whole lot of free fame.