I've been away from DAoC for some time. I used to play on MLF hib, but left shortly after ToA. It's been long enough that I would say I am a newb once again. After a trip to the herald and some time spent perusing these boards, I'm eager to start playing. But, since I'm on a mac, I'm not able to start until I get a copy of windows; in the meantime, I had a question.

I've always loved stealth classes, especially in DAoC. However, I've never successfully leveled one to 50. After doing some reading, I've found that the road to 50 has been significantly condensed, which is great. Numbers like 4-6 hours to get to 35 have been thrown around. As someone who took around a year to hit 50 back in SI, I'm just a little skeptical. How accurate is this? Starting from scratch on a new realm, with no money or people to play with, how long (on average) is the road to 50 for a stealth class? Most likely a NS, SB, or Inf.

What is the best way to level nowadays? A link to an updated leveling guide, or just some tips would be greatly appreciated. I've done some searching, but given all the changes to the game since I left, it's hard to tell what info is truly up to date.

Thanks for reading

 

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Leveling up is pretty quick if you do so in the BGs. The quest reward XP is HUGE and the Aurulite drops make for nice armor/weapons/trinkets when you can't afford to put a "real" template together.
The tutorial zone makes it easy to get to 10 pretty quickly.
At level 10, you can go to the Hills of Claret and get 15 in a matter of an hour pretty easily, same with Killaloe afterwards.
Normally Thidranki is a bit more tricky since you have people who will kill BG quest levelers and even trickier now since until Monday there is no access to Thid for your 20-24 level character.
Anyway, rinse and repeat through the next BG, Braemar. You should be able to get 30 fairly easily this way in a matter of a few hours.
From 30-39 You will have to do Task Dungeons and it will be slow going (in comparison to what you've just done.) Others will suggest different places that you can potentially level but TDs are your safest bet for big XP returns...especially on a solo stealther.
I'm gonna be real with you a sec, leveling a stealther solo is NOT fun. Especially with no crafter, bot or guild to help out.
Find a guild, take the time to level up a craft and get a bot account. Not saying it's mandatory, just saying it makes things easier.
After you hit 39, get a template together and stay in Molvik a while...at LEAST til RR2L0. Fun Times.

If you are willing to spend real money to get plat (let's not pretend that this doesn't exist)you can hire someone to PL you pretty quickly. Now, that would be a violation of the ToS/EULA and I'd never endorse it. Any post in which I have alluded to endorsing this option is clearly an illusion or a post left by some sort of robot.

Lol

 

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Yes, it won't take very long to get to level 50 and more importantly there isn't much grinding involved (an unbuffed assassin is not the best class for grinding).

Make sure to do the quest "saving Zarees" around level 10 (ask in-game for directions). The reward is a foil hat that instantly ports you to the main city in Shrouded Isles (usable anytime out of combat in PvE zones). This will save you a lot of travelling time and you might as well get used to doing your training etc in this city because is it so easy to get there with the foil hat.

XP bonuses are 50% in mainland zones, 75% in the dragon zone, and 100% in all RvR zones.

There is a feature called "rest XP". Basically, this is a bonus aimed at characters who are not playing very often. The longer you have been logged out, the more rest XP you will recieve when you play (grind). If you don't play very often make sure to always log out in the capital. This gives the most rest XP. You also get a free level every 5 days.

At level 40+ there is a repeatable XP quest (ask in-game) that you will probably use most of the way to level 50.

At level 50, visit the King and you will start to recieve "champion XP" (same way as normal XP). It can actually take quite a while to get to champion level 10 (CL10), but it is not crucial to get this right away.

 

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The best way to level from 1-35 is VERY quick. It's just a matter of getting to the battlegrounds.
What I suggest for leveling:

1 - There's a new tutorial section, run down from the main keep to the small burning tower. Kill 1 invader and talk to the guard standing back from the action. Go and say: "warn" to the guard across the small walk bridge. This should auto ding you to level 2.
2 - Run to the center of the tower, and there's a female NPC standing there who offers a quest that involves talking to 3 different NPCs. There should be red dots on your map. While running this quest (in Albion they're all together, the other ones are spread apart), there is an additional quest in city, given by the NPC sitting in front of a bunch of test dummies. As an assassin, you'll be given two quests. One, take a swing at the dummy with a melee style and the other sneak to the red dot on your map. Hit the dummy with a style, talk to the guy, this should ding you to 3.
3 - Go talk to your trainer for a new weapon, and finish talking to the NPC's around town and return the npc in the center of the city. This should get you close to 4 (remember to buy the cloak off the NPC). There's another NPC sitting near the bridge that you originally crossed (on your way to the red dot you have to sneak to), quickly talk to him and complete two quests: 1 for a buff potion. 1 across the bridge near the red dot you have to sneak to, there's a commander that should con you green or blue. Quickly smash him and walk to the sneak point (involved you stealthing near the red dot on your map and walking over it). Run back across the bridge, hand in the one quest for a chest piece and go and talk to the guy who offered you your stealthing quest. Go finish that off as well. This should get you 4/5.

All of this should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Continue to train to learn new styles.

Port out of the tutorial zone using the channeler standing near the center of the tower (They are found closer to the hill side of center town, I believe East). You should be in: Mularn (Midgard), Mag Mell (Hibernia) or Cotswold (Albion). If you are not level 5 yet (you should be, quickly find some mobs around the town and quickly grind to 5). Now that you are level 5, there should be two small looking NPCs near the center of the town, one of which that offers a quest called: A Hero Desires a Sword. In town find the weapon merchant and buy yourself a new weapon that isn't gray/green.

This requires you running to Demons Breech. Make your way to the breech, in Hibernia it requires you running to Ardee. In Albion, it requires you talking to the old man South, JUST outside of Cotswolds who will port you to Ludlow... then just run up the hill towards Camelot gates, in Midgard the same thing is required using a port from Mularn to Vasudheim, the Breech is on the right hand side while running to Mularn from Vasudheim.

Enter the breech, and kill the mobs at the front of the breech. Get level 6. Then continue to smash mobs on the way down to the center of the breech. There is a statue standing in the middle, quickly pop on top of the statue and get a pop up saying: you find the sword. Head down into the breech until you kill enough mobs to make level 10. Port out of the Breech and make your way back to the NPC that gave you the sword quest. Hand it in for a full set of armor. Pop into your main city and train your way to level 10, you should also get a new chest piece and a weapon.

This should take all of 25-35 minutes. At the end, you should have a full set of armor, a flashy main hand weapon and be level 10.
Now, this next part is a bit of a pain, but at the end of the day, you'll thank me for this. Port BACK into the tutorial zone, and make your way to the town on the RIGHT side of the map (not the one you were in orginally, there should be a horse route there). Get to that town and find a quest that offers a Horse as a reward. Quickly complete the quest (the NPC should be on the left hand side of the town when entering the town); and get yourself a horse, welcome to the world of decent speed at anytime!

10- Make your way back to the starting tutorial town and port out again. Make your way to your main city or port into SI via the portal near Mularn/MM/Cots and talk to the channeler again. Port to the battlegrounds.

From 10-30, you can now level your way up in the BGs. Once you port in, you'll see two NPCs offering quests that give Aurulite as reward, as well as XP. Run them... Thidranki the level 20-24 BG, might be a bit of a pain, because of the gankers. But you can also make some realm points... Thid is a bit of a bummer, people fully template their toons, and playing an untemplated PvE toon... you won't be able to kill them, not even close.

This should take only a few hours.

30- The BGs are no longer a valid way of leveling. Wilton is the 30-34 BG, and sucks. Not a lot of PvE camps and requires some kind of Water Breath to be any kind of effective.


You can now do this a bunch of ways, depending on the realm, this is the way I suggest, all involve getting yourself to the frontier. You can port to the frontier via channelers.
Midgard: Port yourself to Fensir Faste, and make your way West. Enter a large wooded area known as Hjemsokt Woods, and start killing any mob you find. (stay away from the zombies, they disease you and are a pain). The emphasis of killing should center around Biting Winds, each time you kill one, you receive an eye. Kill 20 of them and save the eyes in your inventory. You can kill from 30-39 there. When you are level 38, you can run and turn in your Biting wind eyes for 2-3 bubbles of free XP.
Hibernia: Port to Cair Treflan via a channeler (in the frontier). South West of the camp, there is a lot of aggressive mobs. Kill them until you have reached ~32-35, depending on the rate of kill and the xp gained. Focus on Alp Luachra for their heads. When you reach that point where XP isn't worth it, port back to Druim Ligen and head down the hill to find Cruach Imps. Kill them until level 37, where you can then turn in your Alp Heads, if you only have like 3 of them, don't worry about it, and just keep killing imps. The imps also drop "Red Cruach Wings". You can turn these in at level 38 again towards level 39.
Albion: Port out to Dynas Emrys, similar to Cair Treflan and head North out of the Relic Gate. Outside there should be a a small forest with some Bwca in there. Kill them for a bit, some should be some pretty high con... OR head to Forest Sauvage and port to Caer Renaris. Head East and find some sprites/Ettins. You can kill until 39. Bwca's will also drop Fell Creature teeth. So will Shadowhunters, who are North of Snowdonia Fortress (Snowdonia Border keep).

This should take a few hours as well.

At 39, you can hit up Molvik. Find yourself some random armor (From the housing merchant, ported there from a channeler) and make sure to +8 to stealth, buy some random armor pieces that have +buff enhancement on it, to swap on/off when using buff potions: on CM type in Might, Invig, Speed, Fortitude, Strength, Dexterity, Deftness and set the maximum amount of gold to 10g. Get those potions; use them and try and make at least RR2 in Molvik before you move on, the longer the better for learning how to play.

When you're ready to leave, you should level out of Molvik, by killing people until 40 (remember you type in /xp off when you've gotten 7-9 bubbles of XP into level 39 in Molvik, to not level out prior to obtaining the wanted RR). Once you're 40, head to:
Hibernia: Ardee. Midgard: Vasudheim. Albion: Ludlow. and find a quest that requires killing 10 mobs. Set up /binds to the correct locations and run that quest until A) you're 50 B) you feel like taking a shotgun blast to chest.
It's good platinum though, keep that in mind. It will give you a good starting point when you hit 50 and want to start a template.

Anyways, any more questions, good luck. This was only my way of doing things, I'm sure there are much better, this way will give an avid gamer (that's not on 24/7, but instead only playing a few hours a night maybe) a 50 in only a few days.

 

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Thanks for the replies. I've bookmarked the thread, as there's a lot of really helpful info here. Can't wait to get started back up again.

 

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lol after two hours of doing that quest tonight, shotgun to the chest is exactly how I feel.

a good bit of advice to make money is to level spellcrafting to LGM. if you're fast, people throw plat at you to SC their gear.

 

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spec main wep and poison, people say for solo grinding, to spec like a gimp merc or zerk ect, but poisons make shit go alot faster,

like stated, join a friendly zerg guild, they usually help the most.

dont be afraid to ask for advice, but dont ask for handouts, albs zerg guild is albion avengers? mids is scarlet knights and who knows if hibs have one.

be warned that zerg guilds are srs bsns and there are ranks and other crap that i dont care to deal with, sometimes they even say that their guild is full, (because having 130 members is ok but 131? you best be joking) but theyll usually tell you to join another guild in their alliance.

make some friends, i used to hand out 5p to random scrubs from my zerg guilds if i saw that they were acctually new or really had no idea whats going on. plat is stupid simple to make in this game, im sure someone wont mind giving you 1 at least.

i cant because my accounts are closed because im lazy and dont wanna play atm!

 

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Hehehe, I know. I remember doing the quest when I had no platinum just to be able to template my toon, and each time I was like: "when will this end... FFS."
But I kept dragging it on; because as I said... Platinum really really helps when you're templating.

Knew that sentiment would reach out to someone rofl.

 

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To chime in... don't forget about NF and/or DF when levelling up after the BGs where you can't get the XP quest anymore.. since XP rate is 200% in RvR enabled zones.. but keep in mind that you might get ganked in those areas.