newbie questions.

Devorah

Hello all! I need some advice.

I'm an Iron Realms veteran, having played Achaea and Imperian, each for over a year. I'd like to jump into Lusternia, but currently, my ability to obtain credits with cash is limited, so a majority of my lessons will have to come from gold.

So my question is this: are there any archetypes/specializations that are better suited to grinding out gold/lessons than others (e.g. better at hunting than others, less reliant on expensive equipment)?

Everiine

Having little other experience than my own class, I can say that Warrior is the class to avoid, then. The equipment is super expensive, and you need a lot of it.

Ssaliss

I'd say it really depends on what you want to do... Monks, for instance, are pretty cheap when it comes to setting up and are pretty good when it comes to bashing, but I think they also suffer from the pretty high artie-costs for fighting like warriors do.

Shaddus

If you want to do well at hunting, Harmony-style monk (tahtetso or shofangi) possibly as a lobo for regeneration.

Hiriako

Monks can fight without artifacts, though they do help. Even with just cheap L1 runes I was extremely potent. Psychometabolism-based monks are very potent as hunters, and harmony makes it even more obscene.

Moondancers are top-quality hunters due to all that they can do to stay alive (Mother, Sprite, Nymph, Maiden, Full, Waxing).

Warriors are generally not recommended for PvP unless you can trans many skills. If you can do that, they're good fighters. As for hunting, they're really the best for speed once you get masterwork weapons. I'd say the monk or MD has more survivability. Mages/Druids are probably the squishiest/worst hunters. When it comes down to it, anything is fairly effective, with Mages probably being back at the bottom of the list.

But survival - psymet harmony (Tahtetso or Shofangi) monk, for speed - Warrior. Once you get weapons. Monk's solid though.

Karlach

Eco -wood druids aren't too bad Hiri, good mix of offence and defence. Maybe so Ickytree more than Wilde. Anyway to the OP, I'd forget hunting. Honestly your best bet is to go Bard, and instead of hunting, influence.

Here's why. Your early levels of hunting are dictated between your offensive capabilities and your mitigation. For monks/warriors the former is going to suck thanks to annoyingly high miss rates, and the latter because mage, guardian/wicca and bard are squishy (wicca less so once you get skill investment) Also overall for the longest time your crit rate sucks, your kill rate will be slow as all hell.

Also the mobs you're bashing don't drop decent gold early on, whereas a racial specced bard (Viscanti not included) has the charisma/ego pool off the bat to charity influence stronger denizens than you can bash at that level, gaining gold and more importantly esteem which you can sell at quite the nice amount.

Also (presuming you don't go into areas where the creatures are aggressive) your costs of running are much lower, all you need really is bromides and a few select cures if you have to travel through a dangerous area (past cave fishers or grue for example) on your way to influencing. That and with no reliance on critical strike rate your scaling is less frustrating, in short, once you invest in the skills (and there are far less you will need as an influencer than as a hunter due to not needing as much curing, mitigation, and for monk/warriors combat to reduce your missrate)

Because you won't be going into combat, you won't be dying (well, much. Mistakes do happen as you pass through dangerous territory) and you can simply leave a room once you regain equilibrium to avoid being shattered (running out of ego) with no risk of being proned/crippled/paralysed/entangled etcetcetc. Also because you're influencing you also aren't going to get lumped with enemy territory statuses that make some of the more lucrative hunting spots a no go for anyone without a cloaking gem, and considering you won't be influencing off Prime, Avechna's got your back.

If you want to look into improving your abilities, you can get a Beast to improve your influencing capabilities (and at less lessons than a hunter needs for Bodyguard) and various artifacts that increase your influence strength, esteem gains and if you can't be arsed taking off your jewellery and fancier clothing, a hat that makes you look poorer than you are for better charity gains. Hunting artifacts are far more expensive (hello Crit rune/RoA) and there's more of them if you want to seriously invest in the type of bashing speed and creatures that will net you the kind of gold you could have been making 20 circles earlier just
sitting down with the denizens and having a nice chat, and selling off your esteem swollen figurine for ludicrous amounts of cash.


In short, influencing puts you ahead of the hunting curve early on and will continue to outpace it until a Demigod invests significantly more than you to be on par (and hasn't been making as much money to afford buying credits to do so) In the end at the absolute min/max for gold gains bashing wins, but that's for an exceptional (emphasis being probably less than 5 people) who have means to solo bash the areas that give so much ridiculous gold at a high pace. But by that point, you want gold? Grab a profession or two and make a fortune selling stuff in your shop, because if you work out the supply vs demand you can make a fortune.

Hiriako

I found Wood druids to be too painfully slow for hunting with. At least Wildewood. Dunno how Wyrdenwood are. Although, I think something changed a little bit. I'd have to look through logs. Damage though...yeah. It hurt.

Anyway, Influencing is definitely a way to go, and honestly? You can make a ton of money just off of selling esteem, these days. That alone is nice. 

Lerad

TK mages are pretty good bashers, if tankiness is the only thing taken into consideration, because some of the best int races also come with good cha for forcefield tanking. There's also the illithoid tk basher route, which provides safety tankiness even if you manage to somehow burn yourself out. You need some credits to get forcefield in the first place, though.

Monks have amongst the best hunting races, both Kephera and Illithoid are ridiculously tanky (save for against some specific mobs) and that tankiness comes naturally with zero lesson investment due to high con and resistances.

In the PvP area, bards are said to be fairly cheap to start out. I've been told the abilities needed for aurics, one of the main strategies of a bard, and fairly important in team fights (which is all of the fighting nowadays), is very easily obtainable.


P.S. BTW, in the grind for credits, questing is probably more effective than bashing or influencing. Low exp and gold output, but curios can net you a fortune, depending on if you're good at driving a bargain or lucky with the wheel. And there are curio quests that require no bashing/influencing ability.

Enyalida

Wildewoods are bad at hunting and can't influence (edit: well) at all. Damage typing and speed both hurt a lot, and you'll have little in the way of defensive or utility abilities, somewhat mitigated by tertiaries, but not much. 

Eodh

I'd like to echo the influencing recommendations above. It got me to high levels (80) in around two weeks.