So I just dinged 50 on my Skald about two nights ago. The problem I have is that I am not sure what to do now. Currently I have finished all epic quests, gotten to Chapter 3 in the Dragon Campaign, and am Champion Level 1. My character is currently wearing his epic armor and using Dragonstorm that someone gave to me. I have no idea how I should template him or where I get my Master Levels from or Artifacts for that matter. I only have 4.2 Plat to my name and that is it, it is a fresh account w/o a bot as I quit playing right after ToA released.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should do next please let me know. I really have no idea where I am going at this point in time. All I have been doing is running RvR and getting my RR up.

Best idea now is to get a template.

Check out the midgard tank forum. Also if your not in a guild I would suggest that to as the game is much more fun with friends.

Once you get your template sorted and arti's leveled go rvr

 

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Well your work is not done yet, 50 is just the first step. What you want to do is find a good template for you to play with, that isn't all that expensive. It won't be the best therefore but it will be a starting point so you are not at a complete disadvantage when it comes to RvRing. Search the web and the forums and you can likely find a template you can manage to acquire.

As for funds, I would suggest you make your character a Weaponsmith or Armorsmith and look into getting your Metalworking skill up to 1000 or so. Then you can hunt for seals in DF while you slowly get your champion levels. Use the seals to buy weapons or armor off the NPCs in DF and then you can salvage those to make jewelry boxes. Sell the jewelry boxes to an NPC merchant and you can get a decent return. I have been doing that and slowly templating my characters one at a time. I also buy seals off the market when I find them at a good price (i.e. 1g per emerald seal (I don't bother), 2.5-3g or so per saphire seal, or 10g per diamond seal). Look on the web for the most efficient DF items to buy for salvaging. Salvaging is really very dull but the money adds up when you do it intensively.

You will also want your Master Levels. You can buy tokens off of other players (who use their bounty points from RvRing to buy them) for 10p per set usually. I know it seems a lot but its likely faster to salvage the money or do TDs than it is to try to farm glass in TOA to buy the same tokens (you can buy them that way as well I believe).

Speaking of TDs, they are a great way to level up Artifacts fast, and they also give pretty decent money when you complete one. There is a mythirian that adds to the amount of money you get that you might consider getting when you have the appropriate CLs.

At Champ level 5 you can get a very good weapon from the NPC weaponmerchants in the King's Throneroom and CL10 gives you a bonus to hit points, both very useful to have. There are ML10 raids you can go on that offer the chance at good loot. I haven't done them mostly because I never know how long I have to play at any one time. If you luck out and get a good item I imagine you can sell that for a good return to help you buy what you need for your template.

Oh you will want to get faction in Svarhamr (or whatever equivalent in your realm, thats the one for Midgard), so that you can access the Dragonslayer NPC and get the good armor available there. You can get each piece of armor for 150 dragon scales (dropped in the same zone, or again bought off of other players on the market), its more for the weapons and other items of course but they are mostly very nice. Thats where your hammer came from. On the 4th page of the NPC in your capital city should be tokens for 150 scales that are used for the armor.

Hope that helps

Oh and yeah, join a good guild as soon as you can. They can help answer all your questions a lot faster than posting on the forums.

 

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Champion levels are kind of important, though not so important that you'll be totally useless without them. However, I'd recommend doing the Labyrinth quests beause you'll get CL's as well as a few plat, and with speed5 it makes things a lot faster. You'll only be able to do so many of them on your own though.

A template is very important, for now you'll probably need to create a very cheap one, and then you can upgrade it later. Good thing is, you can still get a reasonable template for very cheap these days.

First thing you need to do is design a template, I suggest downloading gearbunny, its fairly easy. Otherwise you can always just use a pen and a paper. The idea is to fit all of your jewelry pieces together in a way that you don't waste utility (ie. things are not overcapped). And then you buy armorcrafted gear and hire a spellcrafter to fill in all the extra bonuses that you don't already have.

You should also get artifacts, these you can buy in ToA with Atlantean Glass or Bounty Points. If you are unsure where to go, port to 'oceanus hesperos' and look left of the town where the big blue portal is, in there is where you get master levels and artifacts. Artifacts are relatively good items but first you gotta complete a quest (or buy the quest) and then level the artifact through PvE to unlock all its abilities. Best thing to do is either design a template with a few artifacts in it and then level those artifacts, or find out all of the artifacts which are generally useful to you and buy them all and level them at the same time (you have to be wearing them to level them). I really don't know which ones you'd want on a Skald, but to start I think that Crocodile Tear Ring, Shades of Mist, and Maddening Scalars. It probably wouldn't hurt to grab a some 1h weapons as well, maybe Battler or something. Check the VN Midgaurd Melee boards and ask there maybe.

As the above guy recommended you should maybe level up armorcraft or weaponcraft. I'd disagree a bit, I think all you need is metalworking. Leveling AC/WC to 1000 skill level will take a long time and is super boring. If you want a cheap alternative try leveling Metalworking alone up to about 800. The good thing is, you can craft metalworking recipes to level it up, or everytime you skill up in AC/WC/tailoring, you also get a skill up in metalworking. In other words level metalworking to about 300, then do the other 3 to about 200 and you should be good. Well 1025 metalworking is ideal but I think you can get by with 825. Here's how it works, you find items that are made of metal, you hit the little salvage button, it takes a little while and then you get metal bars in your inventory, you then use the recpies in metalworking (gem studded jewelry boxes), you make those with the metal bars and sell those boxes back to merchants. It's really boring, if you've never crafted before, but its a source of income. The reason I say 825 is because the stuff that you buy in Darkness Falls salvages into Diamond Metal Bars, which you only need 825 skill to 'trinket' (making the boxes and selling). Other stuff in ToA for example salvages for Arcanite Metal Bars which you need 900-1000 to trinket. I think you'll figure it out, if you follow what I said you can get to 800 metalcrafting in a few hours of just sitting there and being bored. And also, as the guy above said, you can just buy Diamond seals from housing rather than going out and farming yourself, because without a bot it will be pretty slow farming stuff to salvage. I think you can make a few plat per hour profit like this, although slow and boring.

Once you are templated then you can go out to RvR and start being effective. I'd say its not 100% necessary to have ML's or CL's right away, but you will get them soon. RvR gives good CL experience, and you get bounty points as well, but I'd say when you save up 15p or so try to buy ML1-10 from someone, they might give it to you for 10 even.

 

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Good information here, thanks! I have a question on artifacts. How do you buy an artifact? I see where you "purchase" the encounter from the merchant (Sphinx)and you hand it back to him to get credit for the encounter but where is the artifact? Is that from another merchant in the Hall of Heros?

 

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Some arti's are easy to do and you might as well save the bps/glass. Otherwise, using bounty points or glass, buy the arti credit from the respective NPC, then hand the arti token to the sphinx. Next, have the book for the arti assembled (from individual scrolls into a single book), find the NPC standing along the walls down the hall that handles that particular arti and click on the arti in the list the NPC displays and then hand them the book and walla your arti is in your bags.

You can buy scrolls/books also using bps or glass. But, you might also check on housing CMs as sometimes they are very cheap and less than the value of glass if that is what you are using.

 

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Ah, so we still need to get the scrolls. I knew it couldn't be all that easy. lol Thanks for the info.

 

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You can also buy the scrolls from NPCs, so it is that easy. Get glass (farm or buy on the market) and buy the encounter, then buy the scrolls (1,2 and 3). Right click on a scroll in a set and get the icon off of it, put that on your bar and then click on it. That will combine the 3 scrolls into the book. With that and the encounter paid for you are ready to go find the NPC that deals with that artifact and obtain it. Then you level it up - as I said TDs work well for this.

I was half awake when I posted my earlier suggestions, I did in fact mean that you should level Metalworking for Salvage, rather than one of the crafting skills (which are much more time consuming, boring and costly to level). I forgot that you can probably level Metalworking up independently now, you used to have to learn a crafting skill to do it.

 

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they sell the scrolls in full books now, but if you buy number 1,2, and 3 separately that works fine, you just pick any of them, put them on your quickbar, hold down the 'use' key and then click on the quickbar slot.

scrolls cost 310 BPs/Glass for a whole books. Sometimes the scrolls don't have the same name as the artifact, for example Maddening Scalars requires Mad Tales Scrolls. So, this is a very handy link that you should look at:

http://www.classesofcamelot.com/Artifacts.asp

This will tell you which scrolls go with the artifact (if it isn't already obvious).

This also tells you the general stats on the artifacts, but beware some of it is outdated, and i've noticed that it does not properly tell you the artifact abilities (the things gained at level 5 and 10). Artifacts are not usually great for utility (ie. like stats and resists and + to skills), but they some very good use abilities. Maddening Scalars for example can turn you into a wolf so your opponents have a harder time telling that class you are, Shades of Mist has 10 minute defensive proc that will add to your hit points, very good in melee combat, and it also has a 'stealth lore' ability that helps you to detect hidden stealthers. Croc Tear Ring is probably very good to have on your Skald because it makes the chants that you have (ie. speed 5) affect everyone in a certain area, not just your groupmates. But even without that its very good to use.

So once you have the artifact credit, and a complete scroll book in your inventory, talk to the merchants that say "_____ affairs".

 

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The advice is pretty sound, but let me add a few simple things.

Atlantis glass and dragon scales are pretty important. Always keep your eye open for ML10 raids. If accepted in such a raid, you'll get 100 glass and 100 dragon scales at the very least. You will be able to get the chance to roll for great templating loot or for items you can trade for whatever you want.

In the meantime, you should always be farming glass or scales to complete your template. Seasonal items like Springtime bracer are great, but you can fill it out with bounty point items.

RvR wise... first, whenever Darkness Falls is open, go there and get your quests from the midgard commander located on the top tier where all the bots are at. They each give about 1250 rps or so for killing 12 enemies of the opposing realm as well as 300 bounty points. Then go to Labyrinth.... even untemplated, people will still want you for speed. There are plenty of pug groups and even my warlock gets groups often. This will enable you to do some much needed rvr.

So in short... farm atlantis glass (easily farmable if you can find a tank/healer killing Colossus in Land of Atum), farm dragon scales (in the dragon area.. just kill yellow/oj mobs), and farm bounty points by killing realm mates (in Labyrinth). These will get you closer to getting the template you need while (hopefully) having fun in the meantime. I'm always farming glass, dragon scales, and people in laby and you are always welcome to join me (i love skald speed).