Monk Guide (from manual)

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eggmceye
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Monk Guide (from manual)

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Monks are the zen masters of unarmed combat and control of their environment through mental discipline. A monk's combat strategy is to land multiple blows quickly rather than huge amounts of damage with each blow. Their defense style is all about dodging rather than absorbing large amounts of damage.

Stats
Monks want to advance Strength and Dexterity equally, and enough Intelligence to continue to use their spells when they are needed (I find that 25 Int is sufficient until you are level 25 or so, then 60 Int is enough to take care of you if you have some vigor).

Skills

Unarmed
Fight with Bare Hands, or just gloves, or an "unarmed" weapon (such as Brass Knuckles, Katar or Neko de). NOTE: if you are using an unarmed weapon, then any attack rating bonus on your gloves will NOT apply. So, either use the gloves with an attack bonus OR use gloves with another bonus (like Magic Resistance) in combination with an unarmed weapon.

Sanctity
Look here for information about each individual spell.

Unlike the other spell disciplines, Sanctity spells are NOT bought or learned from scrolls. Instead, you learn from the Ironfist Grandmaster. Also, your chance of success for all spells is ALWAYS 99, rather than scaling as you advance. In order to learn new spells, build your skill with Sanctity by casting known spells. Once you reach the capacity to learn spells in a new circle, you will be approached by the Ironfist Grandmaster and given the opportunity to train.

Strategy

Natasha's Monk Guide

Build your sanctity skill as fast as possible, just repeatedly cast the available spells, and meditate to restore your mana. Once you qualify for a new circle of spells, grind and find an "elder" monster. defeating it will summon the Ironfist Grandmaster to train you to the next level. NOTE: if there are two spells at a particular level, you will need to defeat two "elder" monsters in order to learn them both.

Once you get it, bind the Seize spell (SRX) to an FKey that gives you quick access. Seize is your alternative to needing a ranged weapon. It costs about 20 mana so get some vigor and / or increase your intelligence once you get this spell.

You have the strength to carry supplies with you, so stock up on yellow pots, health scrolls, protection scrolls, shield scrolls, invisibility scrolls, and food with defense buffs or MR buffs. Use the invisibility scrolls as your escape when you are waiting for a health potion cool-off to avoid death, or to sneak past stuff you just don't have time for.

Tip: Use Sense (SW) in combination with Seize (SRX). If you can see it, you can seize it. So, you can use Sense to see through walls, and seize a single dragon out of a big group of dragons, and bring him over to your side of the wall. Take them out one by one using the Sense Seize combo.


Enter the Drake: An In-Depth Guide for Monks
The purpose of this guide is to inform people on how to play a monk class as efficient and successful as possible.

Choosing the Best Race
There aren't really any races tailored specifically for monks, but there are a few that will give you a big advantage. I'm not going to cover the perks of every race here, just the ones that could be beneficial to a monk.

Human
Humans don't have any perks, other than the fact that you gain 25% more experience from killing monsters. It might be a good idea to start out as a human and pay for a race change once you reach a higher level (seeing as how most racial perks don't even make a difference until a higher level anyway)

Half Troll
This seems to be the favorite race for a monk, as well as most other melee classes. Being a half troll, you have increased health regeneration (that doesn't stop while you're in combat), as well as the ability to dual-wield any one handed weapon for significantly increased DPS (damage per second). This is arguably the best race for a monk.

Draconian
This is just a great race no matter what class you choose. The most notable perk is simply increased damage (magic and physical). Other than that, you have an increased magic resistance stat, which comes in handy later on when you're grinding dragons and other high hitting spellcasters.

Bloodkin
They have some good perks, one of them being increased intelligence (more mana), not to mention that all your attacks have leeching, meaning that you gain mana on every hit that you land. After that, you have increased attack strength and magic resistance (not as much as draconion).

Getting the Best From Your Abilities
Monks can't be played to their best potential unless you make the best use of their spells and abilities. Here, I'll be going over all of the best tactics for player versus monster and player versus player situations.

What Aspect Should I Be Using?
In the early and mid game levels of being a monk, you'll make the most use of your first three aspects: hydra (lightning damage), drake (fire), and yeti (ice). At lower levels, using elemental weaknesses to your advantage will turn a seemingly unbeatable monster into a pile of flesh and bone. For example, undead targets (monsters and players) take an additional 50% damage from fire based attacks, so if you were fighting a lot of undead mobs, you'd want to use aspect of the drake.

In player versus player combat, aspect of the snake is much more useful, as players must stop what they're doing briefly to heal their poisoned status, and a simple heal spell isn't going to do that. The great thing about this is that players only have two options when trying to heal poison: a bandage, a potion, or a spell. The first two options have a cool off time, meaning that players can't cure their poison status at the same rate that you're inflicting it. You only need to worry about a poison curing spell if you're fighting against a priest or another monk.

For higher level dungeon situations, aspect of the turtle might be more useful than anything with the significant magic resistance bonus, but this aspect doesn't provide any extra damage output. Only recommended for certain pvp situations and high powered spell casting mobs.

Sleeping Fist is Your Best Friend
One of the very first abilities you learn as a monk is sleeping fist. This attack costs just a little bit of rage, does low damage, and puts your target to sleep for a short period of time. This skill is invaluable to a monk, as you can use that time to heal or flee. Also, sleeping opponents take double damage, but wake up once they're attacked.

A useful tactic is to use sleeping fist as often as possible on your target during a fight. This will significantly increase your damage per second.

Throat Strike
A VERY useful skill for pvp and pvm situations. Throat strike silences the target (stops them from casting spells, including special attacks). The benefits of this attack go without saying. That dragon looks a lot less scary now that it can't use the kill spell, fireball, or full heal!

A lot of players will tell you that once you learn throat strike, it should be used instead of sleeping fist... WRONG!!! Sleeping fist is still a great attack, and while it doesn't silence the target mid combat, it still puts them to sleep (effectively stopping them from casting a spell anyway) and the next attack you land on them will hit for double damage!

Sense & Seize
Two great spells, one great combination. Sense allows you to see clearly through walls, meaning that there's no reason you should ever be taken by surprise waltzing into a room full of mobs.

Then, we have seize. This spell pulls whatever mob (or player) you're targeting straight to you, with a nasty hamstring effect to boot. Paired with sense, it lets you pull monsters from another room straight through a wall, so you can take them out one by one without having to worry about getting overwhelmed.

Items and Equipment
What you use entirely depends on how you want to play, but I'm going to outline what you need to survive and thrive as a monk.

Armor Type, Tint, and Enchantments
First of all, your gear should always be unarmored class. If you wear even one piece of light/medium/heavy armor, your defense drops drastically.

There are plenty of tints available that all do great things for you, although some are more useful than others. Goldweave gear acts as a light source, while darkweave and battleweave gear provides huge defense bonuses. Silk gear adds 10 magic resistance, plus 10 more magic resistance for every +1 defense on the item (ex. silk swamp boots +5 = 60 magic resistance). Other armor tints aren't worth mentioning here, this is the best you're going to get.

When it comes to enchantments, you have to remember your 50/50 strength and dexterity ratio. You want to keep that ratio no matter what to deal the most damage possible. For dungeons and pvp, you want the highest strength and dexterity enchantments you can wear at your level, with the best tints possible.

However, you don't want to limit yourself to that. Remember that it doesn't matter how much damage you can do if you can't take a hit. As far as physical damage goes, this isn't much of a problem for monks, as they have a great dodge chance given their dexterity and unarmored clothing. Magic damage is a different story though.

You'll want a couple pieces of armor that grant bonuses to your magic resistance. Some people put together full sets of nothing but magic resistance armor, but this isn't the way to go. You're just sacrificing all of your damage for defense against spellcasters. It's all about balance. Make sure you have at least two magic resistance items with the highest possible enchantment for your level.

Last, but definitely not least, is vigour. Vigour greatly increases your mana regeneration, even more-so while you're meditating. Let's face it, downing a potion every time you run out of mana is uneconomical. Meditating to regenerate a couple mana per second is inefficient. Just wear one piece of vigour with the highest possible enchantment for your level, and you can meditate to full mana in just seconds, which really speeds up the grind.

Weapon Types and Tints
As a monk, it's totally possible to not use any weapons at all (in fact, if you do, you have a higher chance to land critical hits!). Still, some prefer to use "unarmed" weapons. This is still as good of an idea as going completely unarmed, because you do higher base damage as well as different types of damage.

Brass knuckles - good vs. monsters that are weak to bludgeoning damage (minotaurs namely)

Katar - good vs. monsters that are weak to piercing damage (dragons)

Neko de - good vs. monsters that are weak to slashing damage (daemons and other hellspawn)


The tint of your weapon is very important. You'll never want to use untinted weapons, even if the slaying enchantment is higher than anything else you have. That extra +1 attack just isn't worth it.

Vampyric is the dungeon smasher's choice. You gain hp on every hit, which makes it great due to the monk's fast attack speed.

Copper is good for monks as well, with increased damage and attack speed.

Blackrock and adamtium give more damage, while adamantium also gives a 10% boost to your attack strength.


Fresh Off the Island
Time to take your first step into the world. Here's everything you need to know as a newbie monk.

Choosing Your Skills
Once you make it to the end of Newbie Island, you head over to Max so you can choose your primary and secondary skills. A monk always starts with 30 unarmed and 20 sanctity. For your secondary skill, I HIGHLY suggest that you choose meditation, as it's a very slow skill to raise and monks rely on mana to play properly.

If you don't want to choose meditation, then inscription/item lore are good skills for any newbie (identifying items and making health/town portal scrolls). You could always do healing, but this is kind of a waste seeing as you get a healing spell very shortly into the game.

Straight to the Grind
Before you do anything, you should go to a quiet place and spam cast your "sense" spell until you hit 30 sanctity. This is not a hard task, and should only take a minute or two. The reason for doing this is so that if you happen upon any boss monsters, killing them will grant you the opportunity to learn new spells and abilities! For every 10 levels that you gain in sanctity, you can learn a new spell. As for unarmed skill, you learn a new ability at skill level 30, 60, and 90.

Any time you learn a new sanctity spell, you should go somewhere and continuously spam cast it until your sanctity won't go up anymore, to ensure that you'll get new spells every time you kill a boss.

To the Dungeon!
After you leave the island, you should immediately leave Nordhaven and go northeast to the jail. Here, you want to do two of Bill the Jailer's quests (rats, giant rats) so that you can get a few levels and hopefully stumble across some boss monsters (killing boss monsters is the only way to learn new spells and abilities as a monk).

After you complete these two quests, it's time to make your way to a shrine to level up.

Your First Few Level Ups
As a monk, your strength and dexterity should be kept at a 50/50 ratio for the best possible attack strength and damage output. Intelligence is also important, as you need mana. The extra magic resistance doesn't hurt, either.

Shrines
You can distribute your levels however you want, but for the sake of the guide, we're going to spend our first few levels on strength (more HP and inventory capacity). Head over to the Shrine of Valor and spend whatever levels you've got on strength.

After you've poured 5 levels into strength, you want to spend your next 10 levels at the Shrine of Honor near Mon Ferrato. If you do this, your strength, dexterity, and intelligence will be as close to the same value as possible. After this, you'll be spending the majority of your levels at the Shrine of Sacrifice, which raises your strength and dexterity by 3, keeping them at the 50/50 ratio.

As a human, it's a little difficult getting your strength and dexterity at the perfect 50/50 ratio, but it'll only be off by 1 stat point. If this bothers you, you should consider buying a respec ticket to redistribute your stats later on.

Quests, Quests, and More Quests
At this point, after you've spent your levels from the rat and giant rat quests, you should do all of the guard quests in Nordhaven, Izumi, Mon Ferrato, and Seftonvale, all in that order. By the time you're finished with these, you should be level 25 at the very least. Once all of these quests are done, you can either go out and find more quests (there are many quests that you don't get from town guards, and many that aren't even started in towns) or go grind away clearing dungeons for experience and better gear. A common misconception is that there aren't many quests other than the town guards, but in reality, finding and completing all the quests available to you will result in a fairly high level once you're done (not to mention a lot of money and other sweet rewards).
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ChrisCooper
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Re: Monk Guide (from manual)

Post by ChrisCooper »

Whoa, my monk guide is long winded as all hell.
I'm here to kick ass, and chew bubblegum. And I'm all out of bubblegum.
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