Cash & Equipment Guide for NewbiesFollow

If you are starting out with an untwinked main character and no friends so far money can be a problem and as a result you will feel completely undergeared all of the time.

There are many ways to avoid this but choosing your starting race, town and class can make life much easier or harder from the start on.

By far the easiest combination for a self-sustaining character is a Freeport–based
-Bard
-Cleric
-Monk
-Paldadin
-Rogue
-Warrior

This includes some of the most popular classes so at least one should be appealing to everyone. Any class relying on silk-based armor was left out because the silky way of tailoring is much more expensive and uses up things you better sell than use if you are low on money.

Tips lvl 1:
1. Ask for your Newbie Armor Quest immediately. You will receive a 10-slot container for free which takes giant items also. Ask for all the recipes/molds and write the components down so later on you don’t accidentely sell something you need for your armor. Store the molds in the bank and keep the container.
2. Ask other guilds for the Quest – if your faction is high enough you’ll get their version of the container for their armor quest too. This is no exploit as these are no drop and quite heavy but you can fill your bank slots with the heaviest ones.
3. Kill rodents till lvl 2 and keep the whiskers. Search (via the find function) for the local Exterminator. He will give you 1g+1s+1c for 4 unstacked Rat’s Whiskers (only regular – NOT giant also) and experience. Don’t sell your whiskers, always wait till you have 4 and turn them in.
4. Buy rats whiskers. This is an exploit but such a cheap one I will post it anyway. People often sell their whiskers to vendors and you can buy them for 1s there. So you can make easily 1p each time you log in and invest your coins in whiskers.
5. Don’t use your first skill points yet.

Tips lvl 2:
1. Try to find a Vendor who is at least indifferently conning to you. Don’t sell to someone conning apprehensively to you (but it’s still abargain to buy rats whiskers from those)
2. Keep killing rats of all sizes as your prime target and make money (and still small xp) on whiskers till lvl. 3
3. Buy a fishing pole and 20 bait (3c each) which go into your ammo slot. You only use the bait up if you catch something (or loose it anyway about each 10th attempt). You can fish rusty daggers (don’t sell them now!), sandals, scales and –of course- fresh fish, which is a meal. If you choose Freeport East to hunt the newbie zone you can go fishing in the harbor while healing/meditating. Furthermore if you haven’t got the PoP expansion you will need something to do if you travel by ship to Faydwer later on.
4. Still don’t use your skill points yet.


Tips lvl 3-4:
1. Kill Rats as long as they are at least light blue. Further targets are Wolfs, Pumas, Plains Cats, Orcs and Skeletons - the later two of which provide you with rusty weapons, cloth armor and an occasional shield. Also kill spiderlings en masse and keep the silk. Once you have a stack auction it for about 20-40p or wait for an offer (silk weighs not much, you can easily carry around some stacks with you all the time)
2. Also begin to hunt what might drop components for your newbie armor quest which might take you to East Commonlands or Northern desert of Ro
3. Don’t sell rusty weapons and all kinds of wolf/cat/bear pelt/skin.
4. Once you reach lvl 4 return to your guild and put 10 training points into each blacksmithing and tailoring.
5. Buy 40 sharpening stones (4c each) and 40 water (12c each), get the rusty weapons and tarnish them in a forge – then craft them into ore. The small pieces craft into metal bits, the small bricks into sheet metal, the large bricks into metal rings (you need a file for the metal rings which you can craft with a mold from metal bits at tv 21). Trivials for all of these range from 18-27 except for metal rings which is 40 but you dont need a mold for any of these jobs. Tarnished weapons btw are slightly faster than rusty ones so you might keep one for you.
6. Buy tailor patterns for gorget, cloak, belt and mantle and combine them with ruined pelts/skins in a loom into tattered/patched armor (trivial 26). These 4 areas are not covered by pieces from your armor quest so you will keep them some time. Tailor the cat skins last, these make pieces of human (and half-elf) size. If you have further pelts (at about 15s you could already buy them) make some other pieces of armor starting with the tunic.

Tips above lvl 4:

I can’t say much further because the choices are too much now. If you have the Luclin Expansion and therefore can use the Bazaar there will open even more options to you.

Of course everything that drops a tailorable belt/skin, some silk or a rusty weapon is your friend. True money-yielders are rare, if you can obtain a magical weapon (cleric at least can summon at lvl 9) you can hunt willow-wisps for drops up to 25g.

Regarding tradeskills - you can skill up on smithing crafting studs (which you can use for studded armor: 1 medium quality pelts/skins+ 1-4 studs, tv 56) and steel boning (which you can use for reinforced armor: 1 High quality pelts/skins+ 1-4 boning, tv 108). Personally I tried to skill up on metal rings to 40 and then chain jointing (tv 95) which uses a smitty hammer (10p) but only ONE metal rings. And at lvl 50 began doing bucklers/shields (tv 62+) and from 70+ banded armor (tv 95+, you'll need the sheet metalfor this) starting with the areas my newbie armor didn’t cover.

I am making banded armor now at lvl 11 and have not bought a single piece of ore so far. The orcs in East Commonlands even drop their weapons as they spot me, remembering I used to pick the ones with swords first *lol*.

You can also skill tailoring up until you are able to make handmade back packs (10 slots, weight reduction 10%, tv 88) which will be very useful for yourself and sell at the Bazaar for 25-50p.

Fishing will always sustain you so I would practice it everytime you are low on food but don’t put any points into it. Other trading skill are only moneysinks at lower level except for fletching which is cheap as long as you only want to sustain yourself with arrows.

Of course this guide does also apply to other citiy/races being Halas and Rivervale as good as the above with a slight lack of rusty weapon drops but most others have some flaws especially:
Qeynos – no sharpening stones(!), no cat pelts (which are human “size” regarding tailoring) on lesser than lvl 10 beasts
Kelethin – no rodents, no rat whiskers and of course no exterminator . Furthermore only wolfs around which drop to few pelts to easily skill up on tailoring.

Kaladim is different. Pelts are mainly from Rats (which make bait at best but no armor) but you get rusty weapons sometimes if you to turn bone chips in at the paladins guild. You also get tattered armor as a reward for doing so occaisonally so in Kaladim you can put all your efforts into smithing.

I hope this will encourage some newbies rather try to sustain themselves and become craftsmen instead of ending up as beggars shouting for a weapon or shield but I am sure I have left a lot out and any additions/corrections will be appreciated.


Edited, Wed Feb 25 03:35:13 2004 by Leiany