New Husband-Wife duo with questions

Star Jewel gives excellent advice, as usual. On the matter of runes and insignia, you have just entered an area where you will receive many pieces of loot armor with these. The Stone Summit dwarves tend to drop a LOT of armor bits compared to most other foes. (How convenient that this happens just at a good time to start learning about armor upgrades. I LOVE the design of this game. ) It will be worth your while to visit the rune trader NPC in Ascalon City and get an idea of which ones are valuable by looking at the prices for which the trader will sell them to you.

Rune trader prices do fluctuate, though the ones that Star Jewel mentioned are consistently valuable because they are always popular. There are a few others as well, such as Blessed insignia. But very valuable runes are rare, so there isn't any need to obsess over checking the price every time you get an armor drop. Familiarity with values will come with time.

As a baseline, the trader sells the least valuable runes and insignia (which is most of them) for 100g, and will buy them from you for 25g. These are not worth salvaging unless you need them on your own armor, because you will probably destroy the loot piece while salvaging them, and the loot piece is probably worth more than 25g. You will lose money by salvaging armor indiscriminately, especially when you consider the cost of expert salvage kits and ID kits that you will use up in the process. You will be better off just IDing and merching most armor loot.

Ahh, that is great advice from all of you, thanks! I have a new perspective now on experimentation with armor and crafting and your community advice will have an impact on our enjoyment of the experience.

So much depth and subtlety to this game. You all are going to *hate* this comparison, so forgive me. When Summer and I choose our games, we generally have shied away from the really hyper popular ones. We played Gods & Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, had a lot of interest in Earthrise, stuff that was definitely off the beaten track. So we were very late in coming to WoW, we tried it for the first time in 2010 and, although we don't play it any more, we level capped and had fun doing heroic instances in epic gear, and generally maxed out our experience. But it was a real joy playing for a change a game that was mature and highly polished. We were blown away by how much of the WoW world was like that. It *felt* good.

Guild Wars has been a similar experience for us. Highly polished, very bug-free, lots of little touches that reveal a mature and refined experience, with tons of features to learn and a wealth of community support. It is a true joy to play and discover these things as we go. But omg, the difference in the community here is breathtaking. So you'll forgive the comparison lol!

Anyway, thanks again, I'm sure I'll have more questions, but for now we are having a blast working our through this world and the storyline. We just finished another mission and continue making our way West.

Oh, just curious about the materials trader. Is the trader a consignment operator buying and selling player-provided materials, or is he putting new materials into the market and removing old ones? I can see how the prices are based on supply and demand, but does he have an infinite source or does the market dry up if no one sells to him? Just curious, it's a new game mechanic for me.

Thanks!

Winter Omen & Summer Wrath

All Trader NPCs (materials, rare materials, runes, scrolls, and dye) are consignment. They *can* run out of product. This has, in fact, happened several times over the last couple of years on days that Nick the Traveler asked for some material and players rush to buy it rather than take the time to farm it. It has also happened with the Rune Trader when some game update makes a particular profession or build suddenly popular and large numbers of players develop a need for particular runes and/or insignia. This happened, for example, when the ritualist got a serious makeover, making the profession very attractive to a large number of players who had no previous interest.

Yep. And the trader's prices certainly do reflect it. But the nice part about Guild Wars is that the people who do acquire/farm the hot item but don't want to bother with the hassle of selling to other players (the yin to the yang of those who bought out the NPC rather than buying from players ) get a nice increased price when selling to the NPC, so supply usually gets replenished pretty quickly. During those times, the item may be a bit more expensive for a while, but if you have an absolute need at the moment, you're not left wanting.

Guild Wars is indeed a beautifully well thought out game. It's somewhat spoiled me to the point that no other really holds a candle to it.

Yes, I'm equally impressed. I can't believe I've missed hearing all about this game over the years it's been out. Glad we finally discovered it.

We made it to Lion's Arch tonight about mid way through level 14. We stopped doing some of the side quests and started following the main story line. Interesting so far, we're torn between following it through here in Prophecies or moving over to Factions or Nightfall for a change of pace. We will definitely head over to pick up new armor, but then we have to decide which direction to take. We probably won't hit EotN until we're 20.

We've started finding gold items, which is exciting. I'm still figuring out how to enhance stuff and I've been accumulating a number of runes and insignias. What kind of weapon setup is favored by most Monks? Staves look powerful but are 2H and cost me the ability to use an offhand item. I would imagine a good setup would be a powerful 1H with some kind of enhanced offhand item. I honestly haven't thought too much about it so far, relying mostly on Healing Spirits and Smiting. In the 6 mans we are doing now I'm finding less opportunity to Smite and have my hands full healing and removing for the group, so I may ratchet up Healing Spirits a bit and move Smiting down a tad.

I always enjoy dungeons. Are those strictly post-20 or are there some accessible to us at this level? I don't mind waiting, but I'd hate to pass up an opportunity to try something out because I didn't know about it.

Very cool talking to some of you in game so far. Thanks for saying hi and for all the great suggestions and gestures, they are appreciated.

Winter & Summer

If you move over to Factions and continue forward, you'll face mobs that are level 20. While the henchmen there are also level 20 and party size is 8, you may find yourself overwhelmed. Moving ahead in Nightfall, however, will be right about on pace for you, as I think the first mission you would do would have a mixture of foes level 16-20ish. You may find leveling a lot quicker in the other campaigns as their quest rewards are much higher than in Prophecies.

Wand+Focus vs. Staff confused me so much when I first started.
It mostly comes down to the mods. Wand can take a wrapping and an inscription. Focus can take a core and an inscription. Whereas a staff can take a head, wrapping, and inscription, and has an inherent 20% chance to halve recharge of spells.
But not all the wrappings and cores and heads offer the same bonuses across weapons. And you cannot use the same type of inscription on a focus as you can on a spellcasting weapon.
For example, you can't get an enchantment duration increase on a wand or focus, but you can on a staff (and martial weapons). Conversely, a lot of casters favor "40/40" sets, which can only be accomplished with a wand+focus.

There are other factors to consider, like energy, etc., but I think I've made this even more confusing enough already.

What you choose is determined in part by what you want to do, what you need your build to do, and what's comfortable or available to you.
It's actually common practice in PvP to have multiple weapon sets and equip them based on the given situation at the moment. Monks with spears and shields are even quite common.

I don't think there's a level requirement to enter any of the elite content or dungeons in GW....
In the strictest sense, "dungeons" are only available in Eye of The North. Naturally, because you're treated as a level 20 in North, you could access them as soon as you could get to them. Some are more difficult than others.
Other dungeon-like areas in GW are known as elite missions. Some require you to be ascended, others are so deep in the campaigns that you'd already be level 20 by the time you get there.

I think your first stepping-stone to dungeon-/elite area-crawling should be in North, where entrance is free and a wipe doesn't mean the end of the run. I think Sorrow's Furnace is also pretty forgiving

hi and welcome to gw! <3 i hope you and your wife enjoy it as much as i do. i to have a monk and working on titles with her. it can be hard to heal and smite. until your good at monking i subjest you stick to one part;example-healing only or smiting only. then once your good you can combine them. for weapon sets some perfer staffs only,while others prefer wands/offhands. i dont know about others but i think atm since your only doing pve weapon sets shouldnt matter to much.

and since its your first time playing getting nf heroes would make proph easer. and you can do dungeons at lvl 10 if you want but it would be easer to be lvl 20 to do them. they are like side quests and most only do them for the eotn titles/item drops.

Actually, apart from hopping over to another campaign to pick up better armour and heroes or a particular skill, I'd advise sticking to the Prophesies line thereafter. I may be a traditionalist, but there's a certain sense of achievement to be gained from the completion of the original storyline.

It's also (imho) the most difficult in terms of playing experience, but the learning curve is shallower, so once completed, you will have a pretty good idea of general PvE mechanics.

We've decided we would like to try and hop over to Nightfall to pick up Heroes and some armor and then continue on with the Prophecies campaign. I'm real fuzzy on how that will work, though, so we need a little more info before we decide and I couldn't find these answers on the net.

I know that we have to take two quests open up travel to Elona and Cantha, and that upon completion of these quests we'll be able to take transports there. Then we get quests to get Heroes. Will they start at our level or at level 1? Can I get them all at once or are we going to have to spend significant time there doing quests before we have them all? Will we be well into level 20 before we head back to Tyria?

Heroes look like a very cool addition to the game and we're excited about experimenting with them. The only question is ... now or later.

Thanks

You will get some heroes right off the bat (or close to) when you enter elona or eotn. Then you have to do the story in order to get more of them, some (like razah) is only obtainable by finishing the campaign.
All EotN heroes start at lvl 20. In NF the early heroes' start at <20, but from kourna and onwards it's like lvl 17+. I'm not entierly sure what the first heroes' that you get when coming from another campaign start at, but I think it's lvl 15.

First off - Welcome!

With regards to the question about heroes, heroes are acquired throughout the game as a progression through the various storylines or by completing sidequests. They all have set levels that are usually correspondent with the point at which they are acquired within the storyline.

In other words, some of the early heroes you gain at the beginning of Nightfall will be lower level, whereas heroes that are gained further along, and all heroes in Eye of the North, are automatically level 20. (here's the link to the wiki page for an idea of which quests result in which heroes: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Heroes)

Also, the nice thing about Guild Wars with it's relatively low level cap is that you should find yourself up to level 20 fairly quickly without being concerned about it. As I believe was mentioned earlier, Prophecies has the slowest level curve of all the campaigns (which it sounds you are right on target with so far). Cantha and Nightfall both have a "starter island" where the player is usually under 20, and by the time they reach the "mainland" they are already or close to level 20. These "mainlands" are the other 80% of the campaign so it's far from over

Anddd last bit of advice, all campaigns have 2 sidequests associated with them that allows the player to gain extra attribute points (for a total of 200). As a Prophecies character you will need to eventually progress further along through the Prophecies story in order to access these quests for your characters. While the attribute points are far from necessary to complete the game, it certainly gives you more flexibility with your builds!

Hope you're enjoying the game!

I was going to edit in the link that bdude987 just posted... so I'll complement his post instead with this link regarding attribute quests http://www.guildwiki.org/Attribute_quest

Good to hear that you are getting some heros and armour for your long road to finishing proff campaign. This will make you the most efficiently for your level and make the long proff campaign a breeze. Its not my fav campaign but each to there own. I still need to give you inscription and staff head for that staff I gave you. Maybe see you later.

There is actually a standardised set of weapons for PvP (not so much for PvE, as there is not as much need for hairwidth minmaxing).

First, you can click 'Weapon Sets' button and enable all four weaponset slots. These are shown as 4 bubbles in your lower right corner, unless you edited your interface.

You can instantly swap your weapons using F1-F4 keys. The key to understanding the below is that swapping weapons may push your energy below 0, but it will then still regenerate, enabling you to cast once you get above 0, or by swapping into a weapon set with more energy.

Typical setup for monks - this will use all 4 sets; you will be hitting all of F1-F4 keys:

1) +5 energy spear + +health shield (possibly multiple shields with mods vs fire, cripple, daze, depending on what you will encounter). This is your kiting set. While you won't meet the requirement for shield, you still get 1/2 its armour bonus (that's +8 armour, giving you about 15% damage reduction).

2) -5 energy spear, shield as above: this is most relevant for PvP, unless you play in the area when mobs drain your energy. It's called 'energy hiding set' - by reducing your max energy to only 25, that's max that can be drained from you. Once you weapon swap, you can immediately cast.

3) 40/40 healing or protection set (depending on the type of monk you're playing): meaning both focus and wand with 50% reduction to recharge and casting time, 20% chance (giving a total of... actually 36% chance). Note that you can cast at a very high rate in this set, so watch your energy.

4) high energy set: focus and wand with +15 energy / -1 energy regen. This totals +30 energy but will half your energy regen. Swap into this set *only* in an emergency, when a boost of 30 energy will save the team. Obviously, if you spam-cast in this set, you will be below 0 in all other sets, but you should still swap into them so you can recover at normal speed.

Weapon swapping for warriors: I've played them much less, so don't take this as any kind of a reference, but common approach is to have Vampiric set (for extra damage), Zealous set (for energy management while attacking), Furious or elemental set (for either extra adrenaline or to get around warrior armour bonus) of whichever weapon you choose, plus Furious spear for ranged adrenaline gain. In PvE, instead of the Furious spear, take a longbow or a flatbow (*any* longbow or flatbow, you only need it for its range) to pull monsters.

But don't worry about this until you're much further along. Yes, a full set with max mods does cost a bit and requires some effort to obtain.

Also, gwpvx wiki tends to list preferred gear with every build. Some builds do require a non-standard setup.

First of all welcome! I've been reading this topic for days and I think you got great advice (and I really love how you two are approaching the game), even if now I'd like to tell my opinion on few things

Now don't kill me, heroes are great and all and I understand your excitement for them. But they need to have bars set, and so skills unlocked already. At your current state in the game I think you should really concentrate on the bars on learning skills yourselves and get into game mechanics more. In the meanwhile henchmen are good enough to take care of the rest. Other way you could end up either having horrible bars on your heroes or spending all your time and money on them probably. When I started the game I went straight away with heroes and only after ages I realized how horrible setup I was going around with, if I was to start back I'd rather use henchies (and back then you were limited to 3 heroes so luckily the disaster was mitigated :P).

If you really want to use heroes...
You get none from Cantha, as they are missing in that campaign as well. From Eye of the North you get 2 straight away, a monk and an elementalist, while the rest is onward in the storyline. they're both all lvl 20. From Elona you get straight away the other 2 monks, a dervish and a warrior, all lvl 15. With little questing you can get a necromancer, an assassin (the latter is not worth the effort imho) and the choice between an elementalist and a ranger. If I'm not wrong those are lvl 11 when you get them. The rest in Elona requires going through the storyline instead.

You should be around lvl 16-17 when you're done unlocking travels I guess. But really, tyrian missions have such a slow learning curve that you don't really need to be that high so soon. You're already getting max armor so things are easier already, missions could become way too boring if you're too strong for the area.Usually the level of henchmen of an area is the one you can go around at with no problems, safe for the crystal desert where everything is eeeeeek. I always loved prophecies for the fact that you level naturally just by doing the missions, while the other two campaigns need a bit of grinding/questing to keep your level adequate (almost all my chars are tyrian in fact). So you can just relax and follow the progression. unless you get bored of course

Erhm I wrote too much...have fun

Picking up a few heroes now is not a bad idea. My first character used the first three heroes from EotN to complete Prophecies and do all of Factions, but Nightfall heroes will give you more choice in setting up your teams.

The quest to unlock travel to Nightfall is much more difficult than unlocking travel to Cantha or EotN. The henchmen in LA are utterly useless for this quest and you don't yet have heroes, so I would advise you to enlist the help of a level 20 player or two for the task. (I failed so badly on my first attempt that I gave up on going to Nightfall until after I finished Prophecies. Feel free to PM me if you would like some help with this. I'm on most evenings US eastern time, and much of the weekends.)

When you arrive in Kamadan, you will immediate receive a quest to step outside the city gates and receive four heroes of level 15: a warrior, a dervish, and two monks. A set of upgraded (but not max) weapons for these heroes will appear in your inventory. You can, if you wish, go right back to LA at this point and proceed with Prophecies, but I advise staying in Nightfall for a short while to pick up additional heroes. The dervish will be useless to you in Prophecies because you will not be able to buy or capture any skills for her in that campaign, so you can just ignore her unless you plan an extended stay in Nightfall. The warrior may not be terribly useful, as your wife already has that covered. One of the monks will be useful as a second healer/protter for areas with larger team sizes, and the other can be made into a dedicated smiter, which will also be useful to you.

If you stay, then you can carry out a short series of quests (only one of them presenting any challenge) that will bring you to the Consulate Docks outpost, which is where maximum armor can be crafted. Also at Consulate Docks you can take additional quests that will let you add a level 15 necromancer and assassin to your lineup. Forget about the assassin for now, but the necromancer can be an extremely important hero, either as a minion master or as a curser. (You can have the best of both worlds, since you will each have this hero. One of you can set up a minion master and the other a curse necro.)

You also have an option when you arrive in Kamadan to recruit a level 12 hero, which can be your choice of elementalist or ranger. Since there are two of you, each should choose a different hero. If you were alone, I would firmly recommend choosing the ranger, because the other ranger heroes take much longer to obtain and you can get an ele hero easily with a quick trip to EotN if you want one.

Don't let the number of heroes and the need to upgrade their skills, armor, and weapons overwhelm you. Remember that Prophecies was designed before heroes existed. They start out far stronger than any of the Prophecies henchmen in the mid-level areas, and you will easily be able to upgrade them by the time you need to do so, so there is no great rush to equip them immediately.

> Tells you to mix and dye armor parts however you want.
> Has all but one set dyed full black.

Moving on, I'd like to applaud the enthusiastic community support that the OP is receiving. It's actually a little heartwarming to see people going so far to help a new, interested player, and I hope that other new players are lurking and getting tips themselves.

Boy, you got that right. Thanks for reassuring me that I'm not a complete helpless newbie. I tried it on my own before going to bed last night and failed twice. I decided to wait till tonight when my wife can join me. Then it'll be fun instead of ending in the frustration I did last night. Maybe it's because it was late and I was sleepy, and both times I got to 3/4 chaos rifts, but omg those mobs hit hard. And you're right, my henchies were worse than useless, especially Alesia, who would continually try to res dead players near the still-live mobs. I got to the point of rezzing her last so that she would just stay put lol. What a riot. Gotta admit, it felt good knocking down 3 out of the 4, but that 4th just kept eluding me.

Tonight!

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Do you think your reaction was based on how you had them set up initially, something maybe we can avoid if we take the time to set them up carefully, and with the benefit of the knowledge we've picked up here? Or are you generally of the opinion that having Heroes somehow diminishes the experience?

I've always disliked pet management, and yet always loved games that allowed me to have personalized autonomous Heroes that gained experience and grew with me as I moved through a campaign. Mostly I'm thinking of RPGs and TBS games we've played where I was able to nurture a companion's growth alongside my own. Fun. So the idea is intrinsically interesting to me.

I'm not looking for easy, I like and want challenge. Frankly it's one of the things I love about this game, it's not some dumbed-down stand-in-one-place-and-spam-buttons kind of experience. There are tactics to consider and my decisions actually make a difference in how the game plays out. So the idea of having Heroes isn't to make finishing the campaign easier, but to give us the chance to have more input into what happens and get the rewards of having companions grow with us.

Thanks for your wonderful input, Mintha!

Remember the awful set of skills you got when you first started your character? Your heroes start out the same way. And their starting skills don't even fill their bars. The Nightfall ones have pretty sucky weapons, too; and their armor takes runes and insignias just like yours -- but they don't come with any, it's up to you to provide them.

Because you and your wife have only played Mo/E and W/Mo so far, you've not had the opportunity to unlock many skills on your account that heroes of other professions could use (it is beneficial that you both went monk, though, since you saw how important it is to not be stuck with a henchman monk).

So Mintha's advice is on target for a new player in that situation -- henchmen generally have useful skillbars that make a bit of sense.

Now, when I was starting out, I wanted to use heroes as soon as I could. So I scrounged up the money I had and I went to work creating temporary characters. (All heroes belonging to any of your characters can use any skill that you've unlocked across your entire account.) I made one of each profession in Factions and/or Nightfall and I did the newbie training quests. You get free starter skills this way, some of which your new heroes don't yet know. (I think this is quicker in Nightfall, but is necessary in Factions for Assassin and Ritualist, at least.) I also took advantage of my new temp characters to buy useful skills that didn't say "unlocked" from the skill trainers at under 1 platinum. (And in Nightfall, I went ahead and did those Minor Vigor rune quests a few times, too.)

It's a little more work that way, but it's a lot cheaper than earning the money to buy skills at 1 platinum a pop on your main characters.

That's what I did. You may decide that that's too much effort and prefer to just hang with henchmen until you can afford to buy skills normally. That's what makes horseracing.

However, even if you don't use your heroes right away, recruiting the initial group from Nightfall as soon as possible is important. You can still choose to adventure with henchmen while your heroes wait in the wings. However, when you accept quest rewards (in outposts), you'll want to load your sub-20 heroes into your party panel so they can gain the experience, too. That way, by the time you're ready to use them, they'll have leveled up a bit.

I do think grabbing the necro hero from Consulate Docks and using him would be very helpful to you, though. Minions can be a great monster distraction.

I'd like to get to Consulate Docks now if for no other reason than to get the armor, but I can't figure out how. I'm assuming it's an early destination on the primary quest line in NF, but we spent most of the night training our new Heroes and didn't really advance into the quest line.

What a fun game mechanic! Heroes are much better than I expected them to be. I do hope they don't wind up making things too easy, early indications sure give that impression, but I don't think we've had anything serious thrown at us just yet.

Anyway, we made it to Kamadan! We will probably do the Factions access quest, too, just to have it.

Star_Jewel, I love your suggestion of making Factions and NF starting characters. I already did that earlier to get the bag quests and I think I picked up some skills along the way (Assassin and Paragon?), so I'll probably just use those chaacters to unlock more skills.

The fun level just went up a lot of notches!

You first enter Nightfall at the Sun Docks. You pick up your first quest there.

Battle Preparations → Securing Champion's Dawn → A Land of Heroes → The Time is Nigh

That chain will lead you to Consulate Docks.

"A Land of Heroes" is actually your first opportunity to capture some elite skills, should you so choose.

And for your future reference: When you create characters in Nightfall, the questline to Consulate Docks is a lot longer. Many request in Kamadan to be "ferried" there early by hitching a ride in parties with people who are doing "The Time is Nigh." This allows them to get max armor sooner than they normally would.

(I feel a little ubiquitous posting in your thread so much... But I like to help, and Q&A is otherwise very quiet lately. )

You can acquire free hero skills from the hero skill trainers providing your heros have enough skill points. You can also learn the skills that you heros learn from these skill trainers. So in your case or your wife's, you learn monk or warrior skills for your heros and you can also use the skills that they learn. The monk skills from these trainers are not worth getting thought except for Seed Off Life, however this skill is a Sun spear skill, not a free hero skill.
Pikin in Kamadan & Shiloh in Sunspear Great Hall are the first Nightfall skill trainers. If you want a Necro minion master hero in your team, then you may want to acquire Animate Shambling Horror & Death Nova (not sure if this one is a starter skill anyway) skills from Shiloh in Sunspear Great Hall. Animate Bone Fiend skill you can get from Pikin Kamadan, Jewel of Istan.
There are more hero skill trainers later in Nightfall campaign and some in EoN campaign.
Here are the links for more info on these NPC's
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero_skill_trainer
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Pikin
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shiloh

Since everyone is pretty much helping out I want to help out and say the topic of this thread made me smile. It's so cool and beautiful when people who love each other spend time with each other, especially on GW.

My view on heroes is that it doesn't much matter if their starting skill bars and weapons stink, if you're taking them back to Prophecies.

First, they will be higher level than any henchies you will get until you reach the Crystal Desert, so they will have an armor advantage over them even without runes and insignia (which henchies do not have either). By the time you get there, your heroes will also be level 20, and you will have had plenty of time to upgrade their armor with at least a few runes and insignia, maintaining their armor and attribute advantage over the henchies. You will also have had plenty of time to upgrade their weapons from loot drops, and there are many good max weapons for them available from collectors in the Crystal Desert.

The henchie skillbars in Prophecies are no great shakes, either. (The henchies in other campaigns are generally far better, and EotN henchies are pretty great. I almost miss them now that we can work with seven heroes. ) You will also have plenty of time in Prophecies to slowly upgrade the hero bars until they are more than a match for the henchies, and the Crystal Desert is a good place to begin capturing elites for them.

I did not find the lack of skills to be any particular impediment to using heroes in Prophecies the first time through, and I don't think the two henchies were really carrying the team through the six-man areas. By the time I got to the eight-man areas in the S. Shiverpeaks, the heroes were in pretty good shape, with runed-up armor, good weapons, and good elites. Being able to duck over to Kamadan or Kaineng Center or the Eye to buy a few selected skills is helpful, of course.

In short, Prophecies is a very good campaign for letting your heroes grow with you.

Heh, thanks Soulfire. We have a great time playing together and always have. Our kids used to play, too (in EverQuest we played as a family of 5 and for a time we all played on the Professional Magic tour, winning scholarship money for the kids and having a blast traveling the country). The kids are all grown and moved out now so it's just my wife and I and we are still having fun. ;-)

_____
"Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing". - Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Ah but you have no idea how helpful and encouraging you've been, you and the handful of others who have contributed many posts to this thread. I'm sure there are lurkers getting answers to questions being discussed here, and it is so indicative of the kind of community this game has. I've said it before and I will no doubt say it again: I've played more games in my life than I can recount in one post (Heroes remind me of my X-Com teams lol) and I can say without hesitation, this is THE BEST community I have had the pleasure to be part of. And nothing makes a multiplayer game more rewarding and fun.

And that's because of people like you. Thank you!

Good to know your having fun gaming I'm still gaming aged 61 with no sign of slowing down.
Second childhood I think not haven't finished with this one yet.

Just wanted to say re heroes once you start looking for them there are 2 outside of nightfall, you should find a couple of quests in kamadan one takes you back to lions arch to gain a necro the other takes you to Kaining center in Factions to gain an assassin.
You should be able to pick up half a dozen Heroes and so far as I know you can each add the same hero to the party and it renames one of them.
Perhaps someone will confirm that as its been a while.

Yes, you can have more than one of the same hero in a group. One will have the normal name and the others will have generic names.

Yeah, we needed two M.O.X's in order to complete "A Land of Heroes". Tomorrow night we'll take on "The Time is Nigh" and head into Consultate Docks to shop for some new armor.

It's really true what's been said about this game being more about skillful play than it is about loot or stats. We had a hell of a time initially, trying to take out the groups in "A Land of Heroes" until we came up with a tactic that made all the difference in the world. This game is all about tactical finesse and thoughtful play.

I remember Star Jewel's first post in this thread mentioned how many people underestimate the restriction of being able to use only 8 skills. But that's actually how the original EverQuest worked. You had a spell bar that could only hold 8 spells and you could only change it back in town. It added a strategic element to adventuring out of town that required some thought. Nice to see that game mechanic back in play.

We're starting to see much better drops now with gold weapons and named mods; I'm collecting some nice upgrades for when I get my armor. What are all these Sunspear Points and Commendations we've been accumulating? Are they currency at some exotic vendor?

sunspear points will help you rank up in that title and you get a special point each time same with eotn title. these will allow you to buy skills for free from a npc called hero skills. its a good way to get skills while saving gold. and the other item you keep getting can be used to get items for free like salvage kits,id kits,xp scrolls,extra.

There is another shortcut to the max. armor: Take the trip to the first outpost of the EOTN expansion. It is available for lvl 10 characters and above in Kamadan, Lion's Arch or Kaineng. A short run where you fight against a few low-level enemies and then flee from some larger enemies. Then you get to the outpost Boreal Station, where maximum armor for every class is available. You also get one lvl 20 monk hero and one lvl 20 elementalist hero while doing this quest.

You don't need to continue with the EOTN storyline - just map back to Lion's Arch or Kamadan and continue with Prophecies or Nightfall.

Sunspear points are title points for the Sunspear title track (open the hero window and check your title progress). There are a few skills linked to the rank you have in that title track. You don't have to spend attribute points for that skill, the strength of the skill is provided by the title progression instead. These skills are called PvE skills, because they are only available in PvE play, not in PvP. Some of the best skills in the game are PvE skills or even Sunspear skills: Necrosis for the Necromancer, Critical Agility for the Assassin, Seed of Life for the Monk. There are also skills linked to the Luxon/Kurzick title tracks, which you gain when you play the low-level PvP formats in the Factions campaign: Selfless Spirit is *the* energy managment for the Monk, and Summon Spirits is what makes the spirit spammer Ritualist really standing out.

Sunspear Commendations are tokens that can be exchanged at 2 Sunsper Quartermasters in the Sunspear Great Hall. The best deal is the Bag and the Rune of Holding, in case you didn't bought 2 of them for all of your characters yet. Maxed inventory space free of charge. If you already got them, get 1 Expert Salvage Kit for 3 Commendations.
Later, you get other tokens, which can be exchanged for more valuable items. The best deal for all of these is the Superior Salvage Kit for 5 tokens. You save 2k. The only exception: Later in Nightfall you get "Trade Contracts". 7 of them can be exchanged for a ruby or sapphire, which is the best deal for these, since rubies and sapphires are worth 8-9k.

General advice here is spot on. Prophecies, stop by Nightfall for heros, Prophecies, stop by EOTN for heros and armor, and then go enjoy the rest of Prophecies. Prophecies has the best story line and is a good place to learn your characters.

Armor and runes can be a pita.

1st, grab max armor in EoTN like they said. Hope you like the way you look, but you will be able to change to various armors later.

RUNES:

Placement and choice should be based on play style, but the following set up is simple and more effective than many of set ups experienced players were running. There have been many arguments featuring Survivors vs added armor. Math says armor prevents damage and is more import than +3x health/a hit or less. BUT DO WHAT YOU LIKE.

Blessed Insignias are a great all around choice for most classes and are still cheaper than survivors. Plus they work better as long as you have some enchantments going (prots etc). Feel free to run Radiant etc until you learn how manage energy better. Survivor generally is a waste, but still sell for 800+ and can buy you other runes. As you get more familiar with what your character needs, adjust.

Superior or Major on head piece for the +1. Focus on your main attribute initially (IE Swordsmanship or Axe mastery for wars), before trying to do too much. You will probably have multiple head gear for different builds because of the +1 bonus there.

The chest and midsection take the most blows. So added armor here is important and will serve you well. Blessed is good with one of your main attributes +1 runes (divine for monks/strength for wars). The reason I put one of my main attribute runes here is that way I can change, head piece, gloves, boots (now) and still keep that bonus. Some builds only use really one or 2 attributes and only need 1 or 2 runes for attribute bonuses.

Hands take less hits than Chest and Midsection and is a good place for optional runes that don't provide added armor.

I put Vigor on feet because I use to switch out gear, but sup vigors were expensive so the boots stayed the same. Though also a great place for oddball rune like Lieutenants for wars or bloodstained for Necro Minion Masters because feet dont get hit as much.

Basic war:

Blessed/Knights/Sentinels Helm of Swordsmanship/Axe/Hammer +1-3 +1
Blessed/Knights/Sentinels Chest Armor of strength +1
Blessed/Knights/Sentinels Pants of Tactics +1
Blessed/Knights/Sentinels Gloves of Attunement etc
Blessed/Knights/Sentinels Boots of Superior Vigor.

Blessed +10 armor while enchanted
Knights -3 Physical damage
Sentinels +20 vs Elemental damage! But you have to meet 13 strength req.

Blessed will work for most of the game and the others can be more effective in the right situations. Change helms for what weapon you want to use. You always have +1 to strength and +1 to tactics for flexibility. Later on you can tweak for specific builds.

If you play long enough and really want to maximize what your toon does, you have to build for it.

HAMMER War:
Simple build
Stonefist Helm of Hammer mastery for all hammer bonus's on one piece of armor. Stonefist extends knock downs... the hammer wars specialty.

Optional
Blessed/Knights/Sentinels/etc HELM of Hammer Mastery
Stonefist Gloves of xxxx
This is to keep some extra armor on your head. It's a good thing.


I don't play monk, but here are what I use on my roj heros. LMK if it's not right or missing something.

MONK:
Anchorite/Blessed head piece of healing/Prot/Smite +1-3 +1
Anchorite/Blessed chest piece of divine spirit +1
Anchorite/Blessed pants of xxx (attunement)
Anchorite/Blessed gloves of xxx (prot if healing/healing if prot)
Anchorite/Blessed boots of sup vigor

Feel free to mix and match as you find runes. Some decent runes like Anchorites are only like 100 ea last time I checked. Great to use til you find something you like better. Sell off survivors for better runes. This also applies especially to your heros. Toss whatever you find on them til you find better. Eventually you will be fully tweaked and so will your heros.

Read the hero guides for team builds and equipment later. Right now the game should still be relatively easy. ROJ heros are fun especially since you smite already.

Join a good guild if you havent already. They can help you and you sound like you'd make good members.

GL

Eek! I hope I'm not too late here, but I feel this needs mentioning, especially since you mentioned that your next step is gonna be buying armor. The quest "The Time Is Nigh" is the one used to "ferry" people to Consulate Docks. People often charge around 500g for this, so you & your significant warrior may want to split up temporarily for this one so that can both earn a little extra cash. Just advertise to ferry people in Kamadan right before the point in the quest where it tells you to go talk to the person in the Consulate.