Provocation : A detailed guide for the new player.

[MatronDeWinter]

EDIT: Everyone may not want to be a bard, but this is the fastest way to make money while beginning the game and gaining the basic skills to make a new character. You can also change your bard into something more usfull for hunting or PvP once you feel you can afford it. If this is the case read 2-4 posts down titles "Okay, so your done barding".


When starting fresh on any shard, the most important thing to do, whether you hope to create a beast-slayer, crafter, or PvPer, is to create a source of income. Particularly if you hope to practice magery, money becomes a huge problem for the early developing character. Spellbooks are 6k, it would cost several tens of thousands in regs, not to mention the rising cost of a tiny house where you can store your valuables. If you plan on Player-Killing, you WILL need a house, and houses cost money.

Now, there are other ways you could do this, besides provocation. One would suggest taming, but that takes far to long before it becomes a steady income stream. I would suggest (and have always used) either provocation, tailoring, or fighting. Why not Smithing you say? Well, I prefer to have some social interaction, instead of spending my time online walking from mountain to mountain hacking away with a pickaxe to yield rocks that are too heavy to carry and then risk the death of myself or my pack animal in the process. These three are easy ways to go.

Fighting involves leveling up your stats and then practicing (or macroing) for a few days to the desired skill level. There are good spots with liches (easily downed with a silver weapon, which can be had for a few thousand gold), up to dragons (yes it's possible) and liche lords. These are good sources of income for a character with very little time invested.

Tailors can start making money from the start. It's easy to go around buying up the cloth, cutting it into various items of poor quality (fancy dresses are good) and then selling them back to NPC vendors for a decent sum. But good money can be made in bulk bandaids (which actually require no skill at all) At least with the previous method you earn skill to one day become a GM and sell quality leather armor to players.

I am writting this guide as independant as possible, not relying on other player characters for assistance, because sometimes, they just arent around or are unavailable to help. I suggest you first follow my guide to stat training (also in this forum) and work on the following stats...

100 Str (this is important, the number also represents your hit-points)
25 Dex (you will use dex very little as a Provocationer)
100 Int (this will be your amount of mana for spell-casting)

*It is possible to be a figher/provocationer, though the ability to cast recall and invisible is a godsend, not to mention blade-spirit.

I also suggest you use your starting skills wisely. Choose skills that would require resources to get to 50 such as magery, because it requires a great deal of moneys worth of regs even to get to 50.

PROVOCATIONARY BEGINNINGS-------------------------------------

First thing to do with your new character after getting the stats completed is to scrounge up enough cash for a bunch of instruments. They are sold at furniture shops (like in moonglow) or musical instrument shops (luthiers) (as in brit). Pick an instrument and buy many of the same type, they make no difference. A GM quality instrument only lasts slightly longer than a regular npc purchased one, making the price not really worth it. Quantity over quality in this case.

Your first goal is going to be to Master musicianship. The fastest way is using peacemaking along with it. Why? Because of the delay. If you use an instrument, you must wait 6 seconds or so before you can use another. The same applies to most skills. But you CAN use an instrument, then use peacemaking (both yield music gains) and then wait 6 seconds. This halves the time it takes to GM music. I suggest setting a macro to play a type of instrument, (double click type), using razor you first record the double clicking of the instrument, then right click that entry and select (Convert to d.type, or something similar). Then add a delay of about 500ms (.5 seconds) and then (Use Skill : PeaceMaking) followed by a delay of 6000ms (6 seconds). Loop this macro and play it as you beg for cash, or sheer some sheep and sell the whool. Make this time productive, because you can do other things with this running. Or simply macro, it's up to you, but money for a full spell book, regs, weapons, or more instruments is always nice. Eventually you will hit about 85.0 musicianship. Now you can read on below.

Now find a place within the boundaries of town that has a fence, or stable where you could trap animals. I suggest Delucia, but Cove is nice too. You could use the pens in the stable, but you rish people coming along and killing your animals. Find any small animal, it does not matter what it is, as long as it's something tamers arent intrested in. Get to your pen with no people around and attack the animal and get it inside the pen, then run out and close the door. You are now ready to GM musicianship and provocation by using creating a macro of, or performing the following actions.

Set Razor to record.....
Play the instrument
Use Skill : Provocation
Click the animal that is trapped
Now click yourself.
Now stop razor and check the "loop" box.

Go back using right click to add a delay of..
6000ms at the end of the macro
100ms after double clicking the instrument

The reason we play the instrument in the macro, even though it is not needed, is to gain music at twice the normal rate (like with peacemaking) as provocation also yields music gains.

You can do this until about 80 in skill and then change out the animal to something at least as big as a bull (though I am not sure if it matters) I used a magpie all the way until 80 and a bull from 95-100. What did I do from 80-95 you ask?

I made money, and alot of it. If you want some cash read on, if you have other plans you can stop here.

Get a horse (you have money from when you were preacticing music right?) and a means to heal yourself. Greater heal spell in your spellbook at the least (bandaids are ok if you are a dexer), and head out to the Ophidian lair behind papua in T2A. Ask around, people can help you get there. It is great to have recall (and runes) and the invisibility spell, as well as Cure AND some greater cure potions. (Deadly poison can make short work of you).

Once there, do NOT stop moving, you will die very easily. You are specifically looking for Knight-errants and Matriarchs. They have the best gold. Keep moving, and provoking and once you get some fights going hide yourself with invisible.

Continued below...

[MatronDeWinter]

OK,

I did not fight Ophidians myself, (I prefer an undisclosed location), you may also use anywhere that has two of any high-powered monster. Even dragons, wherever tamers are hunting is where you should be hunting. But keep in mind, you need TWO monsters. They only need one, but you can smile to yourself knowing it took you an infinately smaller amount of time.

You can earn a great deal of money and skill, starting with only 80. Once you reach around 95 the gains become slow and I suggest you macro on a bull to GM.

With your new money, you can afford regs, houses, ect.... Now is a great time to train your magery up. Magery is the best utility skill, and even a dexer (with a little more than 25 int) can benefit from it, just because I chose to 25 dex does not mean you have to.

This is the template for my character...
Provocation
Musicianship
Magery
Meditation
Evaluating Int.
Archery
Tactics

I chose Archery because it is easy to pick off the monsters without getting close, as well as perform a nasty combo with magery. Archery is not required, and Resisting spells would probably be a better choice (for PvP and PvM) but I am pretty good at staying away from monsters, and Magic Reflect goes a long way. Often times a PvP battle is ended in a matter of seconds. This however leaves you with another 100 points for any skill you choose. Check out the popular Mage templates and find something that works for you.

You should now be self-sufficient, and with enough luck gather a slew of nice vanq items and gold. Hope this helps.

-MdW(J)

[Panama Red]

For faster gains add this modification listed below.

\/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/

[Panama Red]

a little enhancement for the least amount of downtime

Set Razor to record.....
Play the instrument
Use Skill : Provocation
Click the animal that is trapped
Now click yourself.
Pause 1.00sec
If (SysMessage "your music succeeds, as you start a fight.")
Pause 9.00sec
Else
If (SysMessage "your music fails to incite enough anger.")
Pause 4.00sec
Else
If (SysMessage "you play poorly, and there is no effect.")
Pause 4.00sec
End If

check "loop" box.

If you have a house, check out my macro.
http://forum.uosecondage.com/viewtopic. ... 085#p43085

[MatronDeWinter]

Panama Red has a point, that macro will yield slightly better results while gaining from 30 to about 85 because the delay differers depending on if you fail.

Ok, So your done barding

Now you have a character with gm magery, some good resist that you may or may not want to gm, gold and a place to live. Drop provocation and Musicianship if you like and grab some Animal taming and start going that route, or get your dex up (again using the stat guide) and begin training swords to be a tank mage, the possbilities are endless. If you want to make even more money, with a more effective template, without wasting much time (with say, taming) then check out the following template. It works perfectly for me, I have changed skills around quite a bit and settled on this template as my PvMer. Swap in anything you like, it's your character.

Code: Select all

Magery 100
Meditation 100
Evalint 100
Provocation 100
Musicianship 100
Hiding 80
Resisting Spells 60
Tracking 60

This is a much more efficient template because you have some resist to keep yourself from being flamestriked to death and the hiding allows you to rest while the monsters do the work. You can use the tracking when looking to find the location of the spawning higher level monsters so your not wasting time killing things that yield little loot. Constantly tracking when you are hidden and waiting for monsters to kill themselves can locate Player Killers up to about 4 screens away. Most places worth hunting have very few NPC's so you just keep note of what names are in the tracking window. You can recall out of danger, or stay hidden, because you will know when the danger has passed (thanks tracking) before anyone even knows that your there.

[grimsk]

Nice guide .. Although my templates will look like this.

Macing 100
Tactics 100
Anatomy 100
provocation 100
MusicianShip 100
Healing 100
Hiding 50
Magery 50

Musicianship and provocation was a pain in the ass . See around 70-80 hours worth of macroing.Add more day because ppl love to kill every pet in stable .
But i was not doing nothing.I made a Miner (Now master Miner) and made around 100K while macroing my bardish skill to gm.So I will have 2 money maker by the time my bard's finished.

You can cast invisiblity and recall well enough with 50 Magery .
You can hide just well enough with 50 hiding .
You will have 2 money maker .

I'm not a big fan of Magery anyway . I love wearing plate armor .
macing because it's good for Kiter and caster with low stamina trying to outrun you.

Personnal preference . Also just start with 49 mucianship and you will have a non destructible and non lootable harp.
I started with 49 Musician
50 Magery (Locked it right away)
1 herding (for the crook to macro stat)

I went to moonglow and yew and slew some sheepo for the wool and gathered some cotton.Just enough to have provocation teached.
I macroed provo until 60
Macroed musichapship to gm
and macroed provocation to gm

After that i got all my other skill teached.
After that i used herding .. All my stat capped after 3 hours.

After that you want to raise macing,Anatomy,Tactics,Healing (or whatever weaponskill)
Here's my Macro

!Loop
Assistant.Macros.DoubleClickAction|1074460884|3617
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:00.1000000
Assistant.Macros.AbsoluteTargetAction|0|2|1910|1434|1764|-2|401
Assistant.Macros.UseSkillAction|1
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:00.1000000
Assistant.Macros.AbsoluteTargetAction|0|0|1910|1434|1764|-2|401
Assistant.Macros.PauseAction|00:00:06

Hire a paladin . They can be found west of britain bank and cost 100 gold piece for 1 days.
*All guard me * and target you so they will turn gray
All stay
All stop

Buy lot of bandage (That why you made a mule)

Go afk for 10 hours and come back and see the surprise.

95 anatomy
60 healing
100 macing
90 Tactics.

[Safir]

Personnal preference . Also just start with 49 mucianship and you will have a non destructible and non lootable harp.
I started with 49 Musician
50 Magery (Locked it right away)
1 herding (for the crook to macro stat)

Actually, 1 point in any starting skill is sufficient to get the newbied items for that skill.

[MatronDeWinter]

Personnal preference . Also just start with 49 mucianship and you will have a non destructible and non lootable harp.
I started with 49 Musician
50 Magery (Locked it right away)
1 herding (for the crook to macro stat)

Actually, 1 point in any starting skill is sufficient to get the newbied items for that skill.

This guide was written before musical instruments became "indestructable".

[Meursault]

Thank you for the guide! Your skillmakeup looks really cool, versatile and usable for more than PvP. Im all new on this server (played first back in 1996-99) and im actually gonna copy your style, going

100 str 25 dex 100 int

100 eval
100 mag
100 med
100 mus
100 prov
70 arch
70 tac
60 res

Just to be able to do a little bit of everything, what do you think?

[Meursault]

Magery 100
Meditation 100
Evalint 100
Provocation 100
Musicianship 100
Hiding 80
Resisting Spells 60
Tracking 60

On second thought, im actually gonna go with this, looks kinda what im aiming for (never been a big fan of pvp anyways). Looks relatively easy to macro as well.