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The Bard Profession

Why Choose the Bard?

Bard’s are an interesting class in that they’re both a caster and a fighter. While bards rely on their songs quite heavily, a well trained bard can also wreak havoc with a mace. They’re a very durable class when hunting the wilds alone and at the same time offer a plethora of benefits to any group because of their diversified set of songs.

What Skills to Pick?

Resisting Spells – 50%
Musicianship – 30%
Meditation – 30%

Resist Spells at 50% instead of Musicianship?

While it is true, Musicianship as a whole is slow, it is not difficult to raise, just slow. On the other hand, Resisting Spells is both slow and difficult, so you’ll find yourself in later game probably wishing you had started with a slightly higher Resisting Spells especially when you begin hunting the more tougher mobs.

What Stats to Pick?

Strength – 50
Dexterity – 10
Intellect – 10

I’ve Created my Character, Now What?

As with most classes you will need to make yourself a bit of gold and the best and easiest way one could find to make gold is to head out of Britain and begin farming in the fields, harvesting crops. This will allow you to make a bit of gold by selling the crops to vendors as well as give you a chance to stockpile much needed food you will need during training. This will also raise your strength some which will allow you to equip better armor and also has the general benefit of giving your character more hit points. Below is a small shopping list of things you will either need or might want to buy once you have made enough gold to do so:

  1. An instrument, this is an invaluable tool for the bard as without it, a bard can not play any songs. For training purposes, just buy a single instrument, there is no need to buy them all. These can be purchases from Lord British’s Conservatory of Music (located at 1454, 1561, 30) within Britain city limits. This is a must buy as it is required for training your Musicianship and Peacemaking to join the Bard profession.
  2. You’ll want to vendor train in Peacemaking as this will be the skill that you’ll most likely train to join the Bard profession, this can be trained from one of the vendors in Lord British’s Conservatory of Music (located at 1454, 1561, 30) within Britain city limits. This is not necessarily a must, but it will get you a little closer to your goal of 60% which is required to join the Bard profession.
  3. Some cheap studded armor from The Best Hides of Britain (located at 1440, 1611, 20) within Britain city limits, you’ll want to buy these as to train Peacemaking will require you to be within melee range of mobs, while they do not hit very hard, you will want a little bit of protection.

Training my Crucial Skills to Join the Bard profession:

You’ll need to build up specific skills and stats to join the class, below is exactly what is required but with this guide, only Peacemaking and Musicianship will be covered as Musicianship is a must and Peacemaking is the easiest of the three optional skills required.

Your Stats Must Be:

Strength – 70
Dexterity – 45
Intellect – 60

Your Skills Must Be:

Musicianship – 65%
and
Peacemaking – 60% or Camping – 65% or Provocation – 60%

Training Musicianship:

This is a fairly easy skill to gain but it is rather slow. There is no real trick to training it but there are a few rules of thumb to remember.

  • Playing the third song from the bottom seems to work the best for training in terms of success to failure rate.
  • Creating a macro within the Options window (accessed on the paper doll of your character) to have your character say .lastsong and setting up UOLoop for a delay so that you do not have to constantly click the instrument and then the gump will help tremendously as well as prevent you from wearing out your mouse’s buttons.
  • If the third song from the bottom is a harmful song, be sure to train this where there is no one around, especially guards. They do not take kindly to hostile actions within city limits.

Training Peacemaking:

This is by far one of the easier skills to train. You’ll need an instrument of course but if you trained your musicianship at all, you will already have one. Ensure you have some armor and a really weak weapon on and find yourself a spot with a lot of harmless mobs such as Headless Ones and remaining in Peace Mode, repeatedly use the Peacemaking skill. This skill is a fairly quick skill to train so there is really no reason to not train it to be honest and it will offer benefits later on as you can use it to sooth mobs for quick getaways should things get dangerous while hunting the wilds of Brittania.

Any Other Important Skills I Ought to Know About?

Along with Musicianship, there are a few other very important skills for a Bard to become successful. You’ll want to train Magery, Meditation, Mace Fighting and Tactics. Magery will offer you the ability to travel around the map a bit easier. Meditation offers you the ability to wear better more durable and protective armor such as bone while casting songs. Mace Fighting and Tactics offers you prowess on the field of battle.

Flutes and Lutes and Drums, Oh My!

There are many instrument types, each type plays different roles for the different song types. One may boost your Song of Recovery while another type will increase the potency of your Song of Shielding or Song of Boosting.

  • Flute
  • Tambourine
  • Tambourine with ribbon.
  • Drum
  • Harp
  • Standing harp
  • Lute

Specialty woods and instruments:

You may find yourself in possession or perhaps just hearing of instruments made of different wood types. These types of instruments can be purchased from Bowyer players and not from vendors. It is rumored that the different wood types may also play an important part in determining the potency of a Bard’s songs, but that shan’t be revealed, get out there and experiment!

Magical Instruments:

While hunting the wilds of Brittania, you’ll likely stumble across magical instruments, these are only found in the form of loot. These are prized possessions for a bard as they increase not just the potency but the success rate of casting a song. There are a total of 5 properties with which an instrument can have if it is magical, for each successive property in the list below, it offers an increased Musicianship skill of 2% (Sonority offering 2% and Consonance offering 10% increase):

  • Sonority (worst)
  • Accord
  • Melody
  • Harmony
  • Consonance (best)

What Songs Are Currently Available?

  1. Song of Illumination – Allows the Bard to offer ALL who are within range the ability to see at night.
  2. Sounds of Injury – A Bard’s first damaging song, causing damage to ALL (except the Bard) who are within range of it.
  3. Song of Fertility – Creates fruits and vegetables around the Bard on the ground which can be eaten.
  4. Song of Lightheadedness – Drains mana from ALL (except the Bard) who are within range of the Bard when it is cast.
  5. Song of Shielding – Offers increased armor to ALL who are within range of the Bard when it is cast.
  6. Song of Transportation – This song has two effects, it allows a bard to mark a single spot on the world map save for dungeons and houses and also allows the Bard and ALL who are within range to travel to the single spot marked on the map.
  7. Song of Bane – Curses ALL (except the Bard) within range of the Bard when it is cast. This curse reduces all stats of those affected.
  8. Sounds of Damage – A Bard’s second damaging song, this song is more potent than Sounds of Injury and will damage ALL (except the Bard) who are within range of the Bard when it is cast.
  9. Song of True Seeing – Allows the caster to reveal any hidden player or NPC who are within range of the song when it is cast.
  10. Song of Boosting – Offers increased stats to ALL who are within range of the song when it is cast.
  11. Song of Recovery – Heals ALL who are within range of the song when it is cast.
  12. Song of Cleansing – Removes Poison, Plague and Flesh Rot for ALL who are within range when it is cast.
  13. Song of Transparency – Allows the bard to hide ALL who are within range of the song when it is cast.
  14. Song of Revival – Allows the Bard to resurrect ghosts who are within range of the song when it is cast.
  15. Sounds of Demolition – The most potent of the damaging songs, this song will damage ALL (except the Bard) who are within range of the Bard when it is cast.
  16. Song of Stunning – Offers the Bard the ability to stun ALL (except the Bard) who are within range of the song, the duration is dependent on the skill of Musicianship the Bard has.
  17. Song of Dispelling – Offers the Bard the ability to dispel summon and field spells within range of the Bard when it is cast.
  18. Song of Feedback – Offers the Bard and ALL within range of the Bard when cast, a Reactive Armor buff which reflects some of the damage dealt to those affected by it back onto their attacker(s).

 

When Playing Songs:

  • Songs are not targeted at any one person or thing, remember that when playing songs, you may accidentally damage team mates or heal and boost enemies, it is very important to remember your surroundings when playing songs.
  • Songs are effected by the different instrument types, so keep track of each instrument in your inventory.
  • You’ll need a higher Meditation skill to wear better armor, the difficulty with which it takes to play a song determines if you’ll be able to play that song with different types of armor.
  • If you happen to select the wrong song and want to cancel the song, simply move your character in any direction until you are notified that the song failed.

Guide created by Sita Shugar