Barding...

[bumbling newb]

I have been messing around trying to find a way to make some coin to build/purchase a home/ purchase a better home after that =P. anyways I made a bard and cant think of where to start =\ any advice on a starter templet (bare minimum) and a location would be most helpful =) or if barding is not such a good money maker for someone who is kind of slow with the controls other choices as any advice would be very appreciated =).

Thanks in advance!

bumbling newb

[Slaine]

Havent made a bard in 10 years however.... They are the best money makers in the game imo. You raise music and provocation. Music is easy to raise just strum away on the instrument. I find going to Moonglow cem and standing on the safe side of the railings to start your provo off. Once you get to 10 you should start getting a few succesful attempts and starting fights between 2 monsters.

Once you have raised to maybe 15 then its time to head off to the lost lands and find yourself a safe spot to start provoking the Terrathon Drones near terrathon keep. Once you have that wieghed off, provoke Terrathon Soldier , then Terrathon Avengers. You should be able to raise very high provoke doing this. Plus terrathon keep is certainly one of the best areas to get cash to fund a new house.

I find a mage/provoke spec best....

Magery, resist, meditation, wrestling, eval int, music and Provocation maxed to 100 each.

[RoadKill]

I find a mage/provoke spec best....

Magery, resist, meditation, wrestling, eval int, music and Provocation maxed to 100 each.

People who are purely interested in making money should swap eval out for hiding. With 100 hiding you'll find it very hard to ever get PKed with this template if you keep your eyes open. Provoke targets, hide till they die, loot. Repeat.

[Waldo]

I find a mage/provoke spec best....

Magery, resist, meditation, wrestling, eval int, music and Provocation maxed to 100 each.

People who are purely interested in making money should swap eval out for hiding. With 100 hiding you'll find it very hard to ever get PKed with this template if you keep your eyes open. Provoke targets, hide till they die, loot. Repeat.

Thats what I did dont regret taking hiding for a sec saved me many many times. Starting out I'de suggest 50 provoke and 50 magery choice is yours tho. Start in a town like minoc or moonglow they have tinkers that sell instruments.

Record a razor macro like

useskill hiding
double click instrument..do this one 10 times stop record then add a 1 sec pauses and change to by type final macro will look like

useskill hiding
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
and so on until you have 10 sec worth of pauses before end of macro loop it,few hours running this will gm music and a decent hiding skill. I wouldnt bother with working provoke up until music skill is 90+

[RoadKill]

useskill hiding
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
d-click tamborine
pause 1 sec
and so on until you have 10 sec worth of pauses before end of macro loop it,few hours running this will gm music and a decent hiding skill. I wouldnt bother with working provoke up until music skill is 90+

Better way..

Use Skill Hiding
For Loop 10
D-Click Item Type (Tambourine)
Pause 1 second
End For Loop
Pause 0.5 second (not required, recommended for some people's latency issues)

[MatronDeWinter]

I have a provoking mage, I can make tons of money provoking large monsters, (but I am rather lazy). Here is the template that I use (mine differs a little)

MusicianShip 100
Provocation 100
Magery 100
Meditation 100
Evalint 100
Hiding 70
MagicResist 70
Tracking 60

I do not use wrestling, because I never plan on touching a monster. Let's face it, there are two things that are going to kill you.

1.)Lag, or Losing connection: Just chock that up to bad luck

2.) PK's, yes the PK's recall from dungeon to dungeon and look for people to slaughter. I find that if I can escape getting killed, (this is only a PvM money maker, I have no intentions of PvPing on her) then it is worth not having wrestle.

The Magic Resist is enough to not take too much damage from monsters that flamestrike and constantly cast harm and paralyse (I resist most mob para), and whenever I can I hide and wait until I can take the kill shot on a monster, but you only need to do that if you want the fame. While I am sitting idle waiting for things to kill eachother I am tracking the area for people. I cannot tell you how many times I have escaped 4-5 reds this way.

I also use tracking to find out when a good monster spawns, so Im not wasting my time killing things that give little amounts of gold.

[Kryptonical]

I have a little different template but its worked wonders for me:

eval int/hiding/magery/med/music/provo/resist

I love this for a few reasons:

a) gm resist is nice, the idea of a bard is to be able to kill those big bad ass monsters...well those big bad ass monsters like to cast big bad ass spells, this is where my gm resist comes in to help.

b) Hiding is absolutely amazing...nuf said

c) eval int seems to play a noticable difference when I'm casting on creatures, yes I'd rather watch 2 creatures just kill each other off but I've found myself caught in situations A LOT of times where monster a kills monster b and still has plenty of health left and nothing in sight...I cast on it.

I was thinking of dropping eval for wrestling but just like a few people have said previously, I dont plan on wrestling...most monsters you can run away from very very easily so that seems like a mute point, the one thing I can see that would help drastically is when those stupid pk GROUPS come in with that dexxer, you would have a much better chance of recalling out...

[bumbling newb]

wow alot of bards and some excellent advice I thank you all *bow* =). I however sux real bad at it ( aka name should be sir dies alot =P ) any suggestions on other things I could get a good sum of cash so I could macro magery would be helpful or advice on being a better bard would be greatly appreciated =). again I thank you all so very much! I will continue to try my best.

Thanks in advance for any help,

bumbling newb

[bumbling newb]

Duh im kinda slow at times I should mention what I was doing. I got gm music 99.7 provo almost 50 magery atm and 93ish hiding. I went to the terethan (sp?) keep and was provo stuff and trying to stay alive, I made about 600-700 gold in 20mins and almost died 6x to avengers =P. uhm anyways I dunno if this helps except to show my newb since returning =p.

Thanks in advance and again to all those who posted,

bumbling newb